Originally posted by dominuslatrunculorum
[b]Is it an insult to human intelligence that a 6 year old boy cannot distinguish subtle word play or some such? Of course not.
I don't think you understand my point. I would not at all be insulted if an animal or a computer showed linguistic competence superior to a child or any other person. As I said, I would consider this remarkable a ...[text shortened]... just as sophisticated not just in vocabulary but in grammatical structure as any other language.[/b]
Not meaning to offend, I thought maybe you were coming off a bit pedantic. Do you do sign language? Just wondered if this was a personal issue. I don't think any of those scientists involved in training the great apes in signing are claiming they know sign language as the deaf knows it, of course it is a very complex language in the hands of experts.
You have to give it a name I would think. What else would you call it? Simple sign?
It IS signing. If they stick out their middle finger at you, you get the drift....
Nobody would be saying an ape could write a book using sign, they just know a minimum number of signs to communicate simple concepts. They wouldn't be able to talk philosophy for sure.
But getting back to dolphins and the naming they use, the ultrasonic waves they use are extremely complex, even for things like 'Hey Joe, howzit hanging'?
They have an ability to send an identifying chirp to a buddy in the midst of a school of dolphins because they can aim the direction of the transmission of the sound with great precision. They can tell the difference between a ball 1 inch in diameter V a ball 1.125 inch in diameter at 100 yards. That is much better than humans can do with their eyes.
Of course, that means a much larger portion of their brains are devoted to analyzing those ultrasonic waves than anything in the human brain and that might make the rest of the brain less able to process higher thoughts like humans. That is just my conjecture though, it may prove they actually do have a complex language but that is for the future to decide.