Discourse and gibbons

[Christian Nelson]

I haven't been able to follow this thread closely, but I think the following
might at least be pertinent to what Kerim notes below. There was an article some
years ago in _Nature_ that reported on the deceptive linguistic practices among
a certain bird species found in the tropical rain forests of South or Central
American. Because these birds eat insects that are flitting about at the tops of
the trees they are easy prey for hawks, so they rotate being sentinels, and call
out whenever a hawk is dangerously near. However, the sentinels also apparently
lie about the presence of danger by calling out when there a particularly juicy
bug flies by--one that they don't want to have to compete for with the other
birds. I think the first authors name might have been Munn, but I can't find the
article now.
--Christian Nelson

"P. Kerim Friedman" wrote:

> I don't want to start a trend of dog stories ... But my mom's dog practices
> deception by pretending to pee on something in order to stall for time while
> another dog approaches. He knows that we want to get to the park, but he
> wants to "greet" the other dog, and he knows that peeing is the only task he
> is allowed to do on the way to the park. So - one leg up and wait!
>
> Don't know if it is discourse or not, but it sure is smart!
>
> The main point I wanted to make was really a simple one: While I agree with
> Celso that we should be careful about maintaining definitions and not
> applying terms like "discourse" to animal communication that doesn't seem to
> share certain features. But, I do think we should also be careful about
> equating "agency" with "language". Just because animals don't talk, and
> don't code-switch, doesn't mean that they don't have higher-order cognitive
> functions (planning, deception, etc.). The complexity of primate social life
> is clear enough to anyone who has studied it, complete with politics, love
> affairs, retribution, etc. It would take a hard core David Hume empiricist
> to deny the complexity of these behaviors and the higher-order mental
> functions involved. But that doesn't mean that they have language or
> discourse. And it is also important to realize that a lot of linguistic
> behavior in humans is little more than the functional equivalent of beating
> one's chest. Look at Bush! Oh, and even David Hume said: "Even a dog knows
> the difference between being tripped over and getting kicked." (Sorry I
> don't have the exact citation. He was using it as a negative example, but I
> think it works great the other way.)
>
> A more interesting question (for me) is why we believe that
> language=thought. This book sheds a lot of light on the topic:
>
> Lee, Benjamin. Talking Heads : Language, Metalanguage, and the Semiotics of
> Subjectivity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.
>
> I highly recommend it! (No time now to summarize its main argument, sorry.)
>
> kerim

--
NetscapeCommunicator4.73Win3220000502