this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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They identified nouns and adjectives in prairie dog communication, that also seems to vary with regional dialects. I'll try to remember to dig up a source when I'm not out and about later.
Edit: here's a not fully scientific link, but has names and links for people who want to go deeper in the science while being a decent lay person's overview.
Yes, the blog name isn't very scientific looking (I have not read anything else on it). https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/08/18/a-career-studying-the-sophisticated-vocabulary-of-prairie-dogs/
And here's a peer reviewed study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347205801174
Weren't science communicators talking about parts of speech in whale communication last year, too? They're using AI to identify patterns and variations in speech.
Here's a general (though older) overview of whale language: https://www.britannica.com/explore/savingearth/the-language-of-whales
Here's a more recent article taking about using AI to identify patterns in speech: https://scitechdaily.com/ai-decodes-sperm-whale-language-revealing-a-complex-system-of-communication/
I appreciate your disclaimers and context of your sources.
That's cool as hell and animals definitely have all kinds of methods of communication that I'm sure we haven't figured out yet - but it's not language.
Okay, I'll bite.
Why isn't it language? And how do you define that a method of communication qualifies to be called a language?
Also, what would you call a method of communication that lies somewhere in between "follow the pheromones" and "modern human comms"?
What's your definition of language?