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Sorry, Nanny Whip
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Good boy
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Pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant pant
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wow wondered, Hmmmm, Can we call a "cry" a word? My dog growls when she apprehends a danger and shows her teeth.
I think you are right, wow, that a single "cry" is not a word, and that the website Faldage sent us to makes an equally good point when it notes that as far as animals are concerned there are only so many distinct grunts or other noises or moves that can be made. The theory is that each noise has a specific meaning. A certain type of grunt may mean "there's a lion prowling nearby in the undergrowth." There's no breakdown of the message and no way to modify it in part to, say, "there's a tiger prowling some distance away."
But I read an article recently (Smithsonian?) about prairie dogs that suggested that these unassuming little critters had a fairly complex system of danger "calls" that could identify the distance, location and type of threat. This seems an awful lot like words to me (though I would hesitate to call it language).
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an article recently (Smithsonian?) about prairie dogs that suggested that these unassuming little critters had a fairly complex system of danger "calls"
And that they came up with new calls when faced with new dangers, if this junk-drawer memory serves. Or was that some totally other animal several continents away?
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there's a lion prowling nearby in the undergrowth." There's no breakdown of the message and no way to modify it in part to, say, "there's a tiger prowling some distance away."
and unless we are in Oz-- (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) where would you be to have lion prowling nearby and a tiger also?
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"calls" that could identify the distance, location and type of threat.
Some monkeys do this sort of thing routinely. There would be one cry to indicate a threat from above and another a threat from below. Individuals have been known to use one of the cries, apparently inappropriately, to distract band mates from a recently discovered food trove. That's called lying. If that's not language I don't know what is.
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The excerpt quotes Dr Laura-Ann Petitto as saying that this indicates these areas of the brain control "fundamental features of language that can be expressed either through speech or signing." It turns that Professor Petitto has a website. Here's her own synopsis of the matter, http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/faculty/petitto/cogn2.html
Max, that is an important site to have pointed out. I printed off several of her articles and took home to read last night - I warmly commend them to everyone here, as I think her research is fundamental to understanding the relationship of our brain to language. although, sadly, there are no mentions of baseball, recipes, jam, ink and all that other important stuff...
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