Science and Speech in Determining "Human" Kind

This bird doesn't speak a language in the same sense (or even close) to the way humans can.First, at about 45 seconds in, the bird asks for water with '[I] want some water' When the tester gives him some water, he doesn't drink it. Clearly he didn't want water, and clearly he had no idea what the meaning was of what he said. The tester passes it off as him being silly, but she's just got her hopes up.She also does not inflect the word 'block', showing that the bird has not grasped one of the most fundamental components of language: grammar.I do not see this as anything significant.Jon

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In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium

Where did I say that no other animal had them? Word repetition is not the only aspect of language; nor is a simple lexicon. With a lexicon of 100 words, and nothing else, a creature can only express 100 different concepts/ideas/etc. Would you say a human could speak if he could only express 100 different ideas? No. There is also need of a grammar, or rather, a set of rules that govern how the words relate. With the set number of grammar rules, and the set number of words, a creature should be able to represent an infinite number of concepts/ideas/etc.”linguistic creativity”that's language.The bird just mumbles out sounds that are either completely random or simple responses to stimuli... and some knob recorded it all in order to get people going 'ooo... ahhh'. But a child will understand 'blocks' and 'block' as being morphologies of the same thing. The bird clearly wasn't able to understand that 'blocks' was an inflection of 'block', else the woman should've just spoken normal English. No, she had to say 'block' instead because the bird did not understand the grammar. Why did the bird not understand the grammar? Because the bird is incapable of understanding grammar. Because grammar is a key component of language, then it follows that the bird has no understanding or grasp on language. The child clearly understands the grammar, even if he/she is not able to repeat it properly at that age. Who? What? Unless Koko's a bird, I don't see how that's even relevant.

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In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium

Do you have any idea what you're talking about, and did you bother reading anything I wrote? How do you combine them if you have a lexicon and 'nothing else'? My apologies, but if that is the case, then you are an idiot. Where did I specify that a particular grammar was required? He responded to a simple stimulus, much like a dog when you say 'fetch ball'. Again, the fact that she didn't say 'blocks' shows the bird's inability to understand grammar. The bird does not see 'blocks' as a mere morphology of 'block', and so deduce they are relevant to the same thing. If we want the bird to understand 'blocks', we'd have to teach it to him as a separate word, which would have a separate meaning to him. In a true language, 'block' is a word that is altered via the rules of grammar to form 'blocks', and so once we learn the rule, we can make plural a myriad of nouns. If I gave you the word: 'kloomp', and told you it was a noun, you could tell me its plural, because you understand the grammar. If we did the same with the bird, he'd ask for his water. I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that IaJ was using them as being synonymous. Though I disagree with him here, it'd be better to simply argue within his definitions rather than trying to argue him on semantics.Jon

Response to a stimulus. Do they also have grammar? What do you define as 'speech'?Jon

We are talking about the damn bird. The capacity for language in other creatures does not indicate the bird's capacity. I did, when I gave the hypothetical scenario:

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With a lexicon of 100 words, and nothing else, a creature can only express 100 different concepts/ideas/etc. Would you say a human could speak if he could only express 100 different ideas?

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To which you replied: 'Yes...'Whether there is 'nothing else' or 'something else' present in that bird is irrelevant at this point, because you have claimed that even if there is just a random storage of words and their meaning you think it indicative of language, which prompted this:

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My apologies, but if that is the case, then you are an idiot.

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Which I stand by fully.If you think someone who's memorised Webster's front to back and nothing else”grammar, inflections, syntax, etc.”can be said to possess 'language', then you rightly are an idiot. Sure, because people who play fetch with their dogs always make sure to throw the items in the exact place, each time... That parrot possesses no greater capacity for language than the dog; his only 'advantage'”if we dare call it that”is that he has the physical features required to actually say the words. You have yet to show his positive evidence of understanding grammar. That the trainer in the video does not inflect 'block' should be evidence that she is just trying to fool people, because she knows in reality that her bird doesn't know grammar, and so doesn't possess language. Sure... the auxiliary term is part of the grammar, and had the bird been trained in another language, the trainer would have dropped the auxiliary because if she included it, she knows that the bird will get confused and just ask for his water. Why? Because the bird doesn't have grammar. Again, you can communicate with the child using proper grammar, which shows that:

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The child clearly understands the grammar, even if he/she is not able to repeat it properly at that age.

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Of course not; but they all have a grammar of some kind, else they are not languages. Because, plurality is part of the grammar of English, the language the trainers are using to communicate with the bird. And, the bird has not been taught in any other language using any other grammar, as far as we know. As it is, there's no indication that the bird understands grammar, and so concluding that 'he can, but it's not like our grammar' is wishful thinking in the least, and at most”here's that word again (actually, a morphology of it)”plain and simple idiocy. If the bird is able to understand grammar, then why was it not taught to him? Simple: he isn't able to understand grammar. Why? Because he's a bird.Besides, most people are not taught their grammar; they acquire it simply through being with other people who speak a language using a particular grammar. That the bird has not been taught grammar, nor has acquired it through being in the presence of his trainers is rather conclusive evidence that he lacks the capacity to understand grammar. Lacking the capacity to understand grammar means that he lacks the capacity for language, no matter how complex his sound repetitions are, no matter how complex the stimuli are to which he is responding”he has no language. Irrelevant. You yourself have used them as synonyms in this very post. For the purpose of this argument, 'speech' and 'language' are the same thing. Making sounds is not language(/speech), even if they sound like words.Jon

You already used 'speech' and 'language' synonymously, so I am going to assume that you are doing so here as well... in which case: It's not about the number of words. Please read what I am writing. It is about having words, and having a grammar governing the use of those words. You need (lexicon + grammar = language). You're shifting off-topic, though. The bird has enough words to qualify, so it's irrelevant to squabble over how many words are needed”we can both agree that the bird qualifies in the size of his lexicon. Where the bird loses the battle, though, is in not having a grammar. (lexicon + [nothing else] != language). I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. Shit, man... what passes as a 'linguist' these days? No one I'd consider to be a linguist of any standing would make a crack-pot judgement like that.Jon

Show me that he has understood the grammar, and I will believe you. So, far, you've all failed to show that the bird understands grammar. Showing that he 'knows what it means' is a far different thing. As far as we know (and this is more likely), he's merely passing the items through two mental filters... one for 'green', then re-running the filter for 'block'. That is nothing more than most dogs can do. Is that what you'd say of a dog who rolls over when given the command to 'sit'? One of the base components of the English grammar is plural inflection. He was not shown to understand plural inflection. He was also not shown to understand the significance of word order, because they failed to test him with nonsensical word orders. They have, therefore, failed to give any evidence that he comprehends grammar.Will you please show me how what the bird is doing is any different than what a dog can do? Will you present evidence of the presence of an understanding of grammar in this bird?Jon

Thank you, Modulous. I find it interesting that the proponent for 'animal language' in the source you've given, Dr. Griffin, says:

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The discovery that ''a bird can express his conscious thoughts and feelings,'' said Dr. Griffin, ''is a great advance. We used to think that was impossible.'' To Dr. Griffin, Alex's achievements are just one more proof of his contention.

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I fail to see, in anything shown or demonstrated by that bird, that he was expressing 'his conscious thoughts and feelings.'Someone from the pro-'birds grasp language' side of the camp really ought to point out an instance where this occurs.Jon

No, my friend, I'm afraid you are greatly mistaken. Yes, there is. Human”and other 'real'”language does not require a single stimulus. Children, usually when old enough to form the words, have a grasp that can be generally considered language. By at least 5 or 6 they have the tools for 'linguistic creativity', a fundamental property of all 'real' languages. Here is 'linguistic creativity':

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Knowing a language means being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before. The linguist Noam Chomsky ... refers to this ability as part of the creative aspect of language use.
In pointing out the creative aspect of language, Chomsky made a powerful argument against the behaviorist view of language that prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century, which had held that language is a set of learned responses to stimuli.

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I'm sorry, but your information on what 'language' is is highly outdated. That I can make up willy-nilly any sentence I want is proof of 'linguistic creativity' and severely dents your argument that 'language' is just response to stimuli.Phil likes sweet, warm, purplish-yellow shortcakes.
Johnny dances nicely though he's got a guitar in his hands.
Phil likes sweet, warm, purplish-yellow shortcakes, and Johnny dances nicely though he's got a guitar in his hands, which is big enough to be used by a man twice Johnny's size and thrice Phil's size...I can continue this ad infinitum, and I require no stimulus. Certainly, there's no guitar around, no shortcakes, no man named Phil, no one dancing... etc.I think the average atheist also demonstrates this idea when they invent animals that they've never seen before, like 'purple crooked-toed unicorns...'.True, real, actual language is such that you can have a finite grammar, a finite lexicon, and produce an infinite array of sentences representing an infinite array of ideas”stimulus or not. Not seen in the bird. Bird doesn't have language.Jon
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An Introduction to Language 8 ed., Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams. pg 8 (2007).

No. Mere ability to give the trained stimuli response is not an indication that the bird has grasped grammar. Let me ask you; s'pose English used infixes in the direct objects that were taken by a particular verb, which served as the infix. Now, s'pose you taught your bird that 'key' = (what a key is) and that 'find' = (what find is) and got the bird when you said 'k-find-ey' to go get the 'key'. If you taught the bird what 'stick' was, do you think the bird would go get the stick when you said 'st-find-ick'?I'm quite convinced that neither bird nor dog would be able to pull this off. Why? Because they lack the ability to understand the grammar as a set of rules governing how the words in the lexicon can relate. Their ability only goes as far as single sound recognition, which is not language of itself.

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Reports of an African grey parrot named Alex suggest that new methods of training animals may result in more learning than was previously believed possible. When the trainer uses words in context, Alex seems to relate some sounds with their meanings. This is more than simple imitation, but it is not how children acquire the complexities of the grammar of any language.

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Dr. Pepperberg refuses to call Alex's vocalizations ''language.'' ''I avoid the language issue,'' she said. ''I'm not making claims. His behavior gets more and more advanced, but I don't believe years from now you could interview him.''

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Again, you're placing more significance on this than on what a dog can do simply because the bird is able to vocalise the sounds as a trained reaction to its particular stimuli. Now, you still need to answer my questions, or I suppose, you forgot about them?

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RAZD writes:

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Clearly Alex knew that asking for water would give him a distraction from the testing.

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Is that what you'd say of a dog who rolls over when given the command to 'sit'?

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Jon
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An Introduction to Language 8 ed., Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams. pg 8 (2007).
A Thinking Bird or Just Another Birdbrain?

I'm sorry, but I have to agree with IaJ on this whole matter. What that bird does with its vocalisation and what a human does with language are things that are of a different kind.As to whether that's evidence for special creation, well, I think you know where I'd stand on that issue. But, I'm nevertheless convinced that all of you have failed to show that what the bird does is anything more than response to stimuli. Even the bird's trainer doesn't agree with you that it's 'language'. I really think you all need to give the point a rest.Humans have language.
Alex the pea-brained bird does not.Jon

How do you expect me to reply to you when you keep making dumbass claims like: All language isn't a response to stimuli. Lot's of language is creative. Being creative is what makes it language as opposed to a response to stimuli. Actually, I did answer that, and will do so again. 'Response to stimuli' becomes 'language' when it stops being 'response to stimuli'.Jon

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what it is you are getting at. Huh? Err... Also StimulusStimulus = singular
Stimuli = plural
Jon

I'm sorry, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any serious scientific papers that are meant to address 'taxonomy according to Genesis'.

If you aren't going to present this evidence, then this debate will not continue. The consensus by the linguistic community is that what the bird does is not language. Explain to me how this isn't contradictory. The part of recognising a question. There's no grammar. Not even the trainer thinks it's language. Not the point. The bird doesn't have grammar. 'Block' and 'blocks' are as different to him as 'hello' and 'goodbye'. It's simple, really, he doesn't possess the brain parts required for grammar, and this is displayed in his lack of grammar.

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Dictionary.com

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4.Generative Grammar. a device, as a body of rules, whose output is all of the sentences that are permissible in a given language, while excluding all those that are not permissible.

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The bird does not recognise a 'body of rules' that can form 'all of the sentences that are permissible in a given language'. You have yet to demonstrate to the contrary, and you have yet to present your astonishing list of 'linguists' who agree with you.Until you can tell me how the bird's behaviour represents his understanding of grammar”merely responding to the stimuli doesn't constitute grammar”and can present the evidence by these 'linguists', I think your argument has no basis.If you don't present those, of course, I'm not going to waste my time discussing something with someone who can't even be bothered enough to bring forth his evidence.Jon