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Comment by lngnmn | Hacker News Reader

Bullshit. That requires brain capacities birds does not possess. These calls are random variations learned from experience (by mimicking other birds).

With enough of machine learning I could publish that trees have a sign-language.

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How are you so sure what a bird’s brain is capable of? And fwiw trees and plants do have chemical means of communication.

You, my friend, need to do a little more comparative neurology research and keep up to date with findings in brain science.

I would stay with MIT linguists, if you would permit me.

No animal signal system has a regular structure and no animal has a brain capacity for producing an arbitrary sequence of phonemes. Only mimicking capabilities.

Thank you.

> No animal signal system has a regular structure and no animal has a brain capacity for producing an arbitrary sequence of phonemes.

Are you absolutely, one hundred percent, positive about that?

No animal?

Read about how much time and resources has been spent on monkeys and dolphins and what the findings are. Hint: no regular structure. Emotional signals and stress calls only.

Here's prairie dog language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1kXCh496U0

you've met all the animals ?

I've met a few good books.

Then you should know better than to make sweeping generalisations and talking in absolutes, I can show you many scientific books from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's that are filled with untrue assumptions, to state that no animal is capable of language when we still no so little about 'brain capacity' seems, premature.

Linguistics, second edition by MIT Press is enough.

Knowledge of fundamental principles spares one from memorizing all the details.

A distinct area of the brain (which birds does not evolved yet) and related corpus collosum linkage are required for even basic language capabilities.

There is a huge gap between mimicking and deliberately producing arbitrary sequences according to the rules. It is a qualitative difference, not merely quantitive. Only humans have managed to cross this gap. All the legitimate, rigorous studies of animal communication systems only prove this principle.

The classic studies of actual brain injuries in humans which form the foundation of the field of cognitive neuroscience stand up in support of my position.

The avian brain is fairly different from the primate brain though, so if a bird language area were to exist, it wouldn't necessarily look like the human ones.

You're also giving birdsong fairly short shrift here. It is definitely not just mimicry--the songs that birds sing are not exact copies of their fathers' songs and the songs' length and complexity plays a role in attracting mates.

It's unclear if birds can learn sequences which are as complex as human languages but it's certainly not as settled as you make it sound. It looks like finches do learn regular languages, but the center-embedding stuff is a lot more controversial (and, as a counterpoint, humans don't actually nest center-embedding clauses very deeply either).

Thanks, you're right, I found this 'Doctor Dolittle’s Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Language' and certainly scientific research supports this and i'd support that, I guess I am tripping up on semantics, language and communication are not mutually exclusive, so animals can communicate, this is clear, the argument is they cannot create the mental constructs that gives language its utility, is that agreeable ?

Animal language studies: What happened?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-016-1101-y

Exactly. Babies (before language acquisition) are communicating in the same way - only expressing emotions with cries and other forms of non-verbal communication.

Prairie dog language decoded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1kXCh496U0

And crows can transmit similar information, such as the description of humans they've never seen.

All forms of anthropomorphism are poisonous dead ends.

Corvids alone refute you.

Like in music, temper, volume and pitch could be varied, nevertheless bird calls has no regular structure similar to what a language has.

Let's not even start about language capabilities in birds.

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