Re: Apes and language

On Jan 28, 11:55 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:

I don't know about current views, but to me it seems that those apes
did handle individual symbols, not syntax or grammar in any kind. My
impression is that you can teach an ape the symbol for banana and the
symbol for eating, maybe even the symbol for hunger. But you cannot
devise a language with a consistent syntax, and you cannot discern a
stable pidgin kind of syntax in the way how the ape uses the symbols.
It is not that there is a tendency for the ape to type, for example,
"myself hunger eating banana", but rather a haphazard combination of
all four symbols often repeated several times. There is no development
towards even the rudiments of a grammar, syntactic functions, parts of
speech, or anything that is the hallmark of the lousiest excuse of a
language human beings have ever developed.

Besides: A human being who had been taught a limited number of symbols
would start using the symbols creatively. He would for example start
using the word "hunger" in the figurative meaning "desire" ("Tarzan
hunger eating banana" = Tarzan wants to eat banana, and then, by an
extension of meaning which is natural in human language, "Tarzan
hunger sleep", "Tarzan hunger copulating Jane", "Tarzan cold, Tarzan
hunger inside house" and so on).

So you have no idea of animal language either. Best
qualifications for a professional killrater. Apes are
very inventive using sign language, or symbol language
(symbols appearing on a touch screen). One ape was
given mustard to taste. She had no word for this funy
stuff, so she said: food hurt - mustard is food that hurts.
Ingenious and funny, that's exactly how human language
works when we have to name things and sensations
we have no word for. But such a dry mind as yours
must project your own barenness upon others, in this
case animals. And as you go on with your killrating
campaign, I come back on your German reply you wrote
to me on March 8, 2006. You are so proud of your German,
but the long first paragraph of that reply, wherein you said
my head may burst the sooner the better, is written in
an overambitious style - your German doesn't come along
like a young man with a spring in his step, rather like
a chain gang pretending to be a chorus line. And then
the very last word of the long sentence is missing.
A hint: the missing word is a derivative of Magdalenian
SAI for life, existence.
.

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