Discourse and gibbons

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

I very much agree with Valentina.  As for Ron's :

>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..."

I would say even that definition is not applicable to (non-human) primate
communication. "Utterance", perhaps.  But, "speech event"?  Where's
planning extended over several turns in primate communication, reflexivity,
metalanguage, self-corrections, pre-turns, meaning negotiation?  Subject
position?  Possibility conditions, rules for discourse circulation?

Of course, all this is an empirical issue. But finding all these elements
is not only a matter of labelling: it is a matter of finding in gibbon
communication enough internal evidence that communication works in such a
way that it resembles human communication well enough so that "speech
event" can be applied without distorting the sense of the expression.

Until this is proven (if), I still prefer "Sex Differences in Gibbon
Communication" over "The Order of Gibbon Discourse" ;-) .

-celso
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
lxalvarz at udc.es
http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/