Re: genes and language (Homer, Richard Dawkins)

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 02/07/05 

Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 13:34:17 GMT

Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
>
> What is the difference between language and communication?
> You shall know the answer by the end of this message.

So, the message hasn't ended yet?

> Here again my basic definition of language from 1974/75:
> Language is the means of getting help and understanding
> from those we depend upon in one way or another - and
> every means of getting such help may be called language.
>
> I told you about Nera, our funny, kind, and clever dog
> from India. She could express herself in many ways: bark,
> whine, moan, howl, seldomly growl, and sometimes kind of
> sing; play her white eyebrows in her black face; wag her
> tail and give other body signals. We replied to her using
> human language, and she obviously understood several words.
> And if not the actual words then surely the tone including
> undertones. In an 'Oh no, don't you see I am working?' she
> could hear a concealed message: 'I should work, but I can
> need a break, so let us fool around some.' She understood
> our body language, even some of our mimic, I guess, and
> certainly other signals dogs can interpret, such as odors
> relesased in the sweat, and perhaps further signals we are
> conveying unconsciously.
>
> All those signals together may be called communication.
> If language resembles a car, a bicycle, a horse wagon,
> et cetera, communication resembles the traffic, the sum
> of all vehicles in motion, passing by on a street ...
>
> The world is brimming of communication. The cells in a
> body communicate by exchanging molecules and even small
> organelles, ions and photons; some trees warn each other
> of insects feeding on their leaves by emitting a gas;
> animals evolved many ways of communicating; even bacteria
> emit signals, calling other bacteria to join them e.g. on
> a drop of fat in a sink; and the greatest accomplishment
> of biological agents, namely the biosphere, is maintained
> via zillions of "voices" we don't hear - as we don't ever
> notice all the calls to cell phones radiating through the
> air, travelling accross the sky; we just receive the one
> call that has our name or number to it. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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