Discourse and Gibbons

[Patrick, Peter L]

	It seems always characteristic of structuralist and then Chomskyan
linguistics to stack the deck in favor of human superiority over all other
species. (I sometimes wonder, from a therapeutic point of view, what inner
needs are fulfilled by adopting this popular position.) Now, such
superiority in the matter of language may well be a fact, but there also
seems to be a question of degree: is "language", "speech" or "discourse" a
moving target? Would these linguists always redefine it in ways that
specifically exclude the most advanced findings in animal "communication"?

It is something of a disappointment to find linguistic anthropologists, who
ought to know more about primates and perhaps be more sympathetic to an
empirical position (rather than the deductive stance that follows naturally
from Chomskyan preconceptions about the biological specialization of
language in the human species -- for they were certainly preconceptions in
the beginning, and it's not clear to me that they have progressed beyond
that to the realm of fact yet), taking the same stance.
	Eg, one could argue about definitions of discourse, and the features
that Celso lists would surely play a role in the argument, but one cannot
sensibly assert that there is consensus among linguists about a definition
of "discourse" or "speech event" such that we must all agree with him. (I'm
not planning to argue about it at present, though it's certainly within the
purview of this list.) Thus it is not logical to offer his definition and
then conclude by assertion that gibbons don't have discourse. They may not
have Celso-discourse, perhaps, if indeed all 9 of his listed elements prove
to be absent -- an ascertainable set of facts about which no-one has made
any argument here yet.
	If anything, my (limited) knowledge of "discourse" suggests to me it
is -- like "language", "dialect", "speech community" -- one of those
concepts linguists are never likely to agree on a definition of, but
definitions of which can play a useful provocative role in debates like
this. That is, if we are willing to adopt the thesis that, say, gibbons do
have discourse and then seriously examine it. Dismissing it out of hand, on
the other hand, contributes little either to primate communication research,
or to the definition of "discourse", as far as I can see.
	So I'm with Ron here, I think. Even though gibbons may not yet be
Gibbons...
	I'm also reminded of something i saw not long ago in the news,
probably misquoting as usual, from primate research findings. I can't even
remember which primates, I'm afraid, but deceptive behavior had been
videotaped: one female creature was grooming a non-dominant male, situated
in such a way that while she could see and be seen by the dominant male, he
could not see that she was grooming the other. (Continuing the therapeutic
vein, this was probably gratifying to any male academic researchers who
might have been involved -- presumably non-dominant in general type...) If
some sort of communication took place here, linguistic or not, between the
female and the dominant male, we might be justified in concluding that
deceptive communication occurred. And "lying" has, I dimly recall, been
offered as a distinctly human property before... Another one bites the
dust...?

	-peter patrick-

Peter L Patrick
Dept of Language and Linguistics
University of Essex
patrickp at essex.ac.uk


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Celso Alvarez Cáccamo [mailto:lxalvarz at udc.es]
> Sent: 13 November 2002 01:00
> To: linganth at cc.rochester.edu
> Subject: Discourse and gibbons
>
>
> 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/
>
>