Confronting Friends and Family

[Faith No More]

The one thing that we agree upon is that the Ark eventually ended up on one of the mountains of Ararat.

When you say "we," do you mean Christians?

[The Grand Nudger]

If other people can take for granted that life self-begins when the right conditions arise (a view I agree with), then I also believe that it's true for language.

Who takes this for granted (other than you, apparently)?

[Annik]

I would venture to say that changing a few of the signs to make them attainable to other great apes is not necessarily changing the language. The English language has a shit ton of different dialects. All of them are English.

I'm not as well versed in linguistics, obviously, but I don't think that gorillas have the brain capacity for the true language learning. Hovik said before that languages can come up with an infinite combinations of words, GSL is too limited for that. It's more like a pigeon than a true language (I'm sure I'll get corrected at some point if I'm wrong, but this is the way I understand it).

Question: Is Hovik a linguist or a student of linguistics? These are different, like husband and boyfriend are.

Everyone has to forgive me tonight. Summer set me loose on all of yous.

He has completed everything he needs for a basic degree, but he is going beyond that. See, it's kind of like how boyfriend and husband are different, but fiance and husband are more similar. Beyond that, though, Hovik is the kind of person who studied linguistics before he went to college for it can continues to study more advanced topics in his spare time. He might not have a doctorate yet, but make no mistake, the man is a linguist.

[Shell B]

I'm a nitpicker on that front. Had the same conversation with Summer recently. Studying an area does not make you a linguist, a scientist, a cook, an astronomer, etc. These terms apply to people who are defined by them, typically in a professional way.

From wikipedia: A specialist in languages, including translators, interpreters, and language teachers.

Fiance is more similar to boyfriend than it is to husband. A fiance is a boyfriend or girlfriend who has promised to marry a person. A husband is not a boyfriend at all.

Anyway, to the more important subject. So, we are arguing that gorillas cannot use language? No matter whether she understands it or not, it is consistently referred to as language here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(goril...f_language At any rate, saying that animals cannot use language is a fundy thing to say.

[Hovik]

I'm a nitpicker on that front. Had the same conversation with Summer recently. Studying an area does not make you a linguist, a scientist, a cook, an astronomer, etc. These terms apply to people who are defined by them, typically in a professional way.

From wikipedia: A specialist in languages, including translators, interpreters, and language teachers.

[...]

Anyway, to the more important subject. So, we are arguing that gorillas cannot use language? No matter whether she understands it or not, it is consistently referred to as language here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(goril...f_language At any rate, saying that animals cannot use language is a fundy thing to say.

I'm really not understanding what you mean about studying something doesn't make one something. I study linguistics in a university. As Annik said, I'm a few credits from a fully fledged degree in the subject, and it's an integral part of my day to day life. I write literature and test hypotheses like any other linguist. Moreover, I would define myself professionally as a linguist since that's what I do academically, and academia is my job. I am not a linguist in the sense of a translator, interpreter or language teacher. I am a linguist in the original and truest sense of the word; I am a language scientist.

In any case, whether you want to say I'm a linguist or not is really irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, my education and experience with the topic still makes me the most qualified individual on this forum (unless there's another linguist afoot with a MA or PhD that I don't know about) with regards to language and linguistics. That doesn't mean that "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong!" nor does it mean that I'm infallible. It simply means that I do, in fact, know what I'm talking about, especially when compared to the working linguistic knowledge of the layman.

And no, gorillas do not use language. There are several criteria that define what a language is, and simply repeating lexical items in a way that can convey vague meaning does not make language. It's definitely language-like (it has some but not all of the criteria that make a language) and linguistically interesting, don't get me wrong, but it does not constitute a full language. The usage of "language" by Wikipedia doesn't make an argument for it being a language, simply a convenient term to describe the fact that it's a rudimentary communication system that has interesting parallels to human language.

Animals don't use language, at least so far as we know up to this point. Many different studies have been done on the capacity of animals to have language, and none have satisfactorily met the requirements. There are several that have a few of the criteria (bee communication is actually pretty neat in that it has a few of the less-found aspects of language such as displacement), but no animal communication system meets all of the baseline requirements for it to be considered language.

[Tiberius]

Animals don't use language, at least so far as we know up to this point.

Given that humans are animals, and humans use language, this is technically untrue.

[Hovik]

Animals don't use language, at least so far as we know up to this point.

Given that humans are animals, and humans use language, this is technically untrue.

Alright, I'll give you that you got me on that one. What I obviously mean is that animals besides humans don't display usage of language.

[Shell B]

http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm

Dolphins use complex sounds to communicate, as do whales. It really depends on how you want to define language. If you, and others, want to give it arbitrary, unobtainable definitions, language will be exclusive to humans by default.

I don't understand calling yourself something before you are something. I'm nitpicking for sure, but I bring it up because I had a similar conversation recently. You are a few credits away. Do you have a job in the field? Are you qualified to teach? I can weld and went to school for metal fabrication. I am not a welder.

[Something completely different]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdx5TbPbKyk

[Hovik]

http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm

Dolphins use complex sounds to communicate, as do whales. It really depends on how you want to define language. If you, and others, want to give it arbitrary, unobtainable definitions, language will be exclusive to humans by default.

I don't understand calling yourself something before you are something. I'm nitpicking for sure, but I bring it up because I had a similar conversation recently. You are a few credits away. Do you have a job in the field? Are you qualified to teach? I can weld and went to school for metal fabrication. I am not a welder.

That website is pretty basic, but it even says: "Critics say that Kanzi's accomplishments are not proof of language ability in primates because the crucial element in language ability is production, not comprehension" and then just trails off. This is a pretty big point. Language is about production.

At any rate, the usage of complex sounds to communicate doesn't define language. First of all, the phrase "complex sound" is inexact. What constitutes a sufficiently complex sound? Bird use complex sounds, but they're not linguistic (at least not in the sense of complex language). I'm certain there's quite a lot we don't know about the communication system used by dolphins and whales, but whether or not they employ language is to be determined. My guess is that they don't, but I'd be utterly thrilled to be proved incorrect.

Anyway, the criteria that define what constitutes a language are far from arbitrary. They're based on what language actually does and how it works. The biggest criterion is the one of productivity. A full language is capable of taking a finite set of elements and producing an infinite number of novel, grammatical utterances. No other communication system on Earth is capable of this.

I'm not going to debate the semantics of my title. I've studied linguistics for the greater portion of my academic career, and I technically already completed my linguistics portion of the degree. I just need a few more credits for the actual piece of paper. I'm a linguist so long as I perform linguistics, something that can only be done by someone trained in the field. I have worked and will continue to work in a laboratory as well. Being qualified to teach is an entirely separate portion of academia. I don't have to teach to be a researcher. I'm not calling myself something before I am that something. I am a linguist. Whether or not I fit your definition of what makes someone a linguist is ultimately irrelevant.