Separating language from biology

[Dan Everett]

> The reason reanalysis is a tool for language change is that people don't
> always understand utterances the same way. And the reason language is
> useful despite these misunderstandings is that language used in context
> transmits information despite the differences between and among
> individuals. If someone seems to understand us, and we never find out
> different, then for all intents and purposes, he really does. That's the
> Turing test in action in everyday life.
>
> If a child says: "I want a banana" we all assume that he knows what he's
> talking about. If a chimpanzee says the same thing, people ask: "Yes, but
> does he have a theory of mind?"

Why would anyone want a 'level playing field'? I am not democratic with
respect to chimps. I know that children have a semantics, even if  I
cannot follow or misinterpret in specific cases. The child has earned its
right to a charitable interpretation. The chimp has not. Nor has any other
species.

A test simpler than a Turing Test is just this: do the members of the
species talk to one another with anything remotely showing properties of
the type that Hockett argued for? And do they do this 'in the wild'. I
like to read of Jane Goodall as much as the next guy, but the answer to my
question is no.

I agree with Chomsky (quoted in Time many years ago) that the idea that
other primates can talk, but need some help from us, is roughly equivalent
to the idea that there is an island of birds somewhere needing humans to
help them fly. Absurd from the outset. That is not to say that they do not
communicate. All species, even paramecia (apparently even by ingesting one
another, if my High School biology teacher is to be believed), do.  But
they don't have a syntax and a semantics. So the Turing Test is not a
useful test because it throws semantics out of the discussion. And
semantics cannot be thrown out.

Try yet another test. The fieldworker test. I do monolingual fieldwork,
frequently encountering people with whom I share no language in common. I
assume that they can talk, though, that they have a semantics and a
syntax, and they assume that of me (perhaps with less justification).
Eventually these assumptions are confirmed by hard work on both our parts.
That doesn't work with computers or chimps. Who would do fieldwork with
either, aside from someone needing a jacket with arms that buckle in back?
There is no reason for assuming a level playing field and many reasons for
not doing so.



Dan