quote:
Too have kids, and heard plenty of lines like 'we goed outside' when they were young
If I remember my development reading correctly (and I might not)
children typically start making those mistakes once they start
to learn that there are rules. Prior to that they operate on a
'copying mom and dad' basis and tend to get the grammar as
right as their parents do.
quote:
What I'm saying is that there's no magic line that separates us from other animals in terms of intelligence or speech faculty. Millions of years of evolution have given us the cerebral hardware to
communicate on a language basis, and it shouldn't surprise us that experiments with gorillas (for example) hit a threshold beyond which the animals are not equipped to communicate.
I agree with the first part, but invoke my 'anti-bias' bias
by saying that if we are not suprised by an experimental
result we may just be biased
quote:
Do animals do the same thing? Not to nearly the same extent, it would seem. We can teach animals large vocabularies, but the framework humans have for language hasn't developed in them yet.
They can (gorillas at least) relate past events though. Coco (sp?)
who was taught sign language, had been captured from the wild
as a youngster (possibly infant) and once able to use sign
language related the story of this happening. She referred to
the hunters as 'feet' also. (I don't know where/if this is reported
formally by I saw documentary about Coco some years ago).
My main grumble, however, seems to be one that you agree with ...
that is we should not discount intelligence out-right in
animal behaviour ... just accept that it is different to our own
rather than non-existent.