primate communication?

[Ronald Kephart]

on 11/10/02 5:00 PM, Mike Salovesh wrote:

> Ronald Kephart wrote:
>
>> on 11/7/02 9:54 AM, Valentina Pagliai wrote:
>>
>>> ... As for "discourse," I think the interesting discourse here (which is
>>> becoming dominant in the US) is one that accepts cross-species comparisons.
>>>
>> For the record, do you think such comparisons are valid, or not? Just
>> wondering...
>>
> Ron:
>
> Strange: I don't understand your question...
>

Hi Mike (et al), Thanks for the thoughtful message, which I guess attributed
to *me* much more thoughtfulness than I really had going for me when I wrote
my question. I was really just asking for help in interpreting Valentina's
use of "interesting": I wondered whether this signaled approval,
disapproval, neutrality, or what? I do agree that "valid" was the wrong word
choice, though.

As for me, as you probably know from that "other email list," I feel that
any alleged similarities or differences between us and our fellow hominoids
are matters for empirical investigation rather than stipulation. I don't
like the idea of "defining" things in an exclusive way unless there's good
evidence for doing so. Personally, I don't have any special problem thinking
about "gibbon discourse," assuming that the evidence suggests that they do
in fact exhibit some behavior that fits at least a loose notion of
discourse, as e.g. (from Crystal) "a set of utterances which constitute any
recognizable speech event..."

--
Ronald Kephart
English & Foreign Languages
University of North Florida
http://www.unf.edu~rkephart/