Underestimation of animal intelligence?

[Leonardo Sidis]

I'm not really sure that this fits under Biology, but oh well... I was wondering how animals, such as dogs, learn to speak their own language.

One would think there would be two possible explanations of how they do this: one being that they are born with an innate understanding of the language, or the other being that the parents of the animal (dog in this case) teach them how to speak. Either choice would carry profound implications about the intelligence levels of animals.

If the second possibility is true, then the language of animals is much more complex then previously thought! A language as complex as this would be could only be used by beings of significant intelligence.

 

[honestrosewater]

What kind of language do you think non-human animals use? For example, does releasing pheromones count as "speaking a language"?

Different means of communication function and might be acquired in different ways. Are you interested in communication via chemicals, body language, speech, etc.?

 

[honestrosewater]

Okay, here are the highlights from some quick reading and searching.

Some animal communication systems are entirely innate (honeybee dances, bird calls) while others are at least partially acquired (bird songs (I think whale songs are too but not sure), and other animals have brain structures devoted to communication. Different means of animal communication (e.g. scent, light, electricity, color, posture), Hockett's design-features, differences between human language and animal communication, and info about language abilities of other animals are summed up nicely here (several links as well):
http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/animal_communication/index.html

You might also want to check out this similar page:
http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/animals.htm

the answers to these questions:
Edit: should have known it wouldn't work. Just search http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/search-ask-ling.html for animal communication.

and these reviews (and the books if you're interested, of course):
http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?SubID=49433&RequestTimeout=500
http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?SubID=16482&RequestTimeout=500

BTW, I don't really follow your argument.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

An interesting and related discussion
Rodents' Talk Isn't Just 'Cheep'
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=81015

 

[Leonardo Sidis]

Thanks for the interesting links! Honestrosewater, my argument I suppose is that animals such as prairie dogs (see the link from Ivan Seeking) have a complex language that can either be learned in the two ways above (and by language I meant a method of communication by producing different sounds). If the prairie dogs aren't born with an understanding of their language, then they must be taught it. If they were taught it, then their language must be complex in the way that it contains a means of teaching others the meaning of certain utterances.

 

[honestrosewater]

Thanks for the interesting links! Honestrosewater, my argument I suppose is that animals such as prairie dogs (see the link from Ivan Seeking) have a complex language that can either be learned in the two ways above (and by language I meant a method of communication by producing different sounds). If the prairie dogs aren't born with an understanding of their language, then they must be taught it. If they were taught it, then their language must be complex in the way that it contains a means of teaching others the meaning of certain utterances.

Well, that's either necessarily true or I still don't follow, depending on what you mean by 'complex'. What do you mean by complex? Did you check out Hockett's design-features? It's certainly not the only option, but it's a place to start. Here's another list with brief descriptions:

From Charles Hockett (1966), "The Problem of Universals in Language"

The Search for Universals Through Comparison with Animal Systems

"The design-features listed below are found in every language on which we have reliable information, and each seems to be lacking in at least one known animal communicative system. They are not all logically independent, and do not necessarily all belong to our defining list for language--a point to be taken up separately..."

1. Mode of communication-vocal-auditory, tacticle-visual, or chemical-olfactory

2. Rapid Fading: Message does not linger in time or space after production.

3. Interchangeability: individuals who use a language can both send and receive any permissible message within that communication system.

4. Feedback: users of a language can perceive what they are transmitting and can make corrections if they make errors.

5. Specialization: the direct-energetic consequences of linguistic signals are usually biologically trivial; only the triggering effects are important.

6. Semanticity: there are associative ties between signal elements and features in the world; in short, some linguistic forms have denotations.

7. Arbitrariness: there is no logical connection between the form of the signal and its meaning.

8. Discreteness: messages in the system are made up of smaller, repeatable parts; the sounds of language (or cheremes of a sign) are perceived categorically, not continuously.

9. Displacement: linguistic messages may refer to things remote in time and space, or both, from the site of the communication.

10. Productivity: users can create and understand completely novel messages.

10.1. In a language, new messages are freely coined by blending, analogizing from, or transforming old ones. This says that every language has grammatical patterning.

10.2. In a language, either new or old elements are freely assigned new semantic loads by circumstances and context. This says that in every language new idioms constantly come into existence.​

11. Cultural transmission: the conventions of a language are learned by interacting with more experienced users.

12. Duality (of Patterning): a large number of meaningful elements are made up of a conveniently small number of meaningless but message-differentiating elements.

13. Prevarication: linguistic messages can be false, deceptive, or meaningless.

14. Reflexiveness: In a language, one can communicate about communication.

15. Learnability: A speaker of a language can learn another language.

"There is...a sense in which [productivity], displacement, and duality...can be regarded as the crucial, or nuclear, or central properties of human language."

-- http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~swinters/371/designfeatures.html

Which of those do you think affect the 'complexity' of a language? I think I might go with Reflexiveness, Productivity, Duality, and Displacement as having the greatest influence on complexity. But I don't see what Cultural Transmission (CT) has to do with the structure, other than it possibly being necessary for certain structures -- but that's the complexity determining the type of transmission, not the type of transmission determining the complexity.

Even borrowing the broad definition

Pearce (1987, p252) cites a definition of animal communication by Slater (1983, see Pearce for reference), which we will also use as a working definition in this lecture:-
Animal communication is "the transmission of a signal from one animal to another such that the sender benefits, on average, from the response of the recipient".

This loose definition permits the inclusion of many types of behaviour and allows "communication" to be applied to a very large range of animals, including some very simple animals.

-- http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/animal_communication/index.html

animals can learn new behaviors by observing and imitating each other, including stealing ideas from each other (and who benefits from stealing?), without any communication going on; e.g. apes fishing for termites with sticks, using rocks to break open fruits or whatnot. In fact, I'd bet that human children can learn a lot about a language without ever sending or being sent a message, by just listening to others speak -- and learn even more if you inlcude listening to themselves speak. Children already learn with little instruction.

Perhaps you're thinking that CT implies Reflexiveness? I think that's an interesting idea, though if I had to lean one way now, I'd lean towards it being false.

From the article, it sounds like the prairie dogs have words that might have some internal structure. But really look at what it says.

This complexity and the apparent prairie dog use of adjectives has led Slobodchikoff to take a leap. He believes that the animals may have more than just a series of identification calls -- possibly a crude language structure that may include a sort of prairie dog grammar.

I think it would be a bigger leap to conclude from that that prairie dogs must possesses significant intelligence.