I want to know (self.zoophilia)
submitted 2015-04-18 22:53:56 by ursusem
I want to know specifically why it is that non-human animals cannot (or why they choose not to) use a human language to communicate. They've got brains, and we've got brains so what gives? Why can't humans and non-humans just talk to each other using "plain English?" And even if your body is physically incapable of producing human speech- why not writing? Why not sign language? Why not some other method not yet discovered?
Language is actually quit distinct from normal brain function. Most language processing seems to happen in two dedicated parts of the brain, Wernicke's area and Broca's area. It would probably take a creature much smarter than a human to fully understand language without having dedicated parts of their brain to it!
But on the other hand, you could probably somehow implant analogues into a dog's brain and they might be able to understand things...
The main barrier in speech would be the vocal anatomy of other being not being as "finely tuned" as it is for humans.
Even if animals had larger brains, they still won't have advance enough vocal cords to speak English, unless say you are talking about a Parrot. One can still communicate to them using English. For example when I had my horse, I would say "good [horses name removed]" right before I would give him a treat. Pretty soon he would look and turn his head toward me expecting a treat every time I said the word "good". However I do agree with you the Apes have been taught to use sign language, but horses and dogs no.
From what I remember of nature documentaries in the late 90s, the problem with literally speaking is that it needs fine control over both vocal cords and the diaphragm. Monkeys, for example, don't have a wide enough spinal cord to allow sufficiently fine control. At least, that's what they said, but given that parrots can mimic our voices I think that's BS.
As for the language itself, regardless of the mode of communication... I'm a software engineer rather than a biologist, so I'm hypothesising by analogy: Computers have a variety of different language types that can express differing levels of complexity. It's known as the Chomsky hierarchy. Human language is (at least) as powerful as the most powerful category of language in that hierarchy because we can say, e.g. "This sentence in quote marks is false".
While non-human animals demonstrably have some language skill in the sense of recognising nouns and commands, I'm not aware of anything that shows they have the ability to combine them in way humans can to describe arbitrary complexity. Not that I would have if such evidence (or even research) exists, I'm not a scientist.
Parrots can understand and use human words to be understand.
It's not a real exception, as far as parrot is almost the only specie with the ability to speak like human.
I'm deeply convinced that horses and dogs can understand what humans say. But they cannot respond, because their troat anatomy doesn't allow it.