language and species a few posts on the subject have pleased me : i am perhaps not alone in having eccentric beliefs about non-human languages . it had started when i was hoping , after finishing my phd , to work on dolphins ' language ; it had continued when i read , somewhere , that the deaf 's sign language was not a language ( how did those people whom i saw meeting regularly in the pub down the road communicate , then , if they did not have a language ? i often envied them being stone deaf - - cursed with hearing as i am , i dislike noisy pubs and restaurants ) . a that stage , it got me thinking that " proper " human language dealt with encoding an n-dimensional conceptual universe into one-dimensional strings ( perhaps with a degenerate dimension extra , if you pay attention to prosodic features ) . that , sign language , on the other hand , encoded it into definitely two dimensions or more - - even though i could not figure out how many , let alone which , having found so little in the literature ( just as anyone doing linguistics should know at least a few foreign languages , perhaps , perhaps they should know at least some sign language , and have practiced it . when i say " perhaps " i mean " definitely " , of course . " perhaps " is a euphemism , a weak excuse for not having taken the time to learn and practice sign language ) . later , about dolphins ' languages , no * cetacean * in this case , i read , somewhere , the circumstances under which orcs had learnt to avoid boats equipped with harpoon guns , which seemed to mean that they must have been " told " how to recognize them by the first to meet those boats for the first time . this seemed too efficient . you just try to explain to someone how to recognize a contraption never encountered before . no paper and pencil , just words . misunderstandings galore . that got me thinking about another possible form of communication . cetaceans " see " by sonar , like bats . they communicate , we read , by sound , in a very wide range ( a few hertz to 100khz or more if memory serves ) . what if they actually communicated by * projecting * sonar images then ? paintings as it were , along with stylized representations . animated too , that 's quite possible . later again , i tied that in with what some will tell you about the intelligence of birds , how some mynah birds seem to understand a few words and use them in the proper context . the complexity of bird songs . the hopelessness of some schemes dreamt up to find out if animals communicated through language strikes me now . putting birds , or whatever , in different cages or pens , training one set to push the third lever from the left to get food ; see if they communicate their discovery to the those in the other pen . if they communicate by projected sonar image we are looking for the needle in the haystack . by song modulation , ditto . there would be , at any rate , dozens , nay , hundreds of ways of explaining " push the third lever " . how would * you * say " lever " if you had never had anything like it in your environment ? " third " ? " from the left " ? so even if they jabbered in a human-like language , one phoneme after the other , we would have a very hard time of spotting their exchange . you know the story about how they said " piano " in beach - la - mar : " big fella box , he got black and white teeth , missus belong white master he fight ' im belong him , box he cry now " . there 's more than one way to say " piano " that way ! i have , then , come to this notion that , when we meet non-human , sentient beings , we probably won't recognize the fact . that those definitions ( and redefinitions ) of language as human language with these and those features , and if it has n't got it then it is n't language , are utterly uninteresting . they would be at best entirely useless , only vacuous tautologies ( is n't that self-referencing ! ) . but in fact they can only be obnoxious , leading to methods incapable of recognizing and analyzing " non-human " languages . such as asl ( insert a sarcastic smiley here ) . to conclude on a related theme . i keep reading how the reconstructed vocal tract of neanderthals shows that they could not have a full language , because . . . blah blah ( i really am loath to repeat the argument ) . how about the vocal tract of a parrot , reconstructed from its skeleton ? j . guy @ trl . oz . au
