Science and Speech in Determining "Human" Kind

Perhaps you'd care to explain then why certain types of brain injury render a previously speech-endowed person incapable of speech if it's not a function of mind? What study are you quoting?

Give me a break. The bible says that snakes and donkeys can talk. That doesn't sound like scripture backs up uniqueness of human speech to me.

Oh bull SHIT. Of course a parent teaches a child to speak. Why do you think children born to Spanish-speaking parents speak Spanish and children born to English-speaking parents speak English? Because they learn from observation and mimicry, not because God flips a switch and turns on their ability to speak.

(1) Humans are neither the last known nor the most recent. New species of bacteria and virus (among others) are evolving into existence constantly. (2) Recency has little to do with evolving. It's not like one thing turns into a better thing turns into another more better thing. Evolution isn't a straight line. It's a tree with many dead ends and many more branches. (3) Your only argument thus far has been that humans are the only speech endowed creature and that proves that humans are the only speech endowed creature when presented with evidence to the contrary.Honestly, as someone who has studied linguistics I could make a far stronger case FOR creationism based solely on speech and language than you've done so far.

So you've gone and applied the Turing Test to animals now? If that's the case, ELIZA must be "kind of speech endowed" despite any comprehension or understanding while Koko and Alex are not.

But that's not what you asked. Now you're begging the question. How do you know? Thus far you have failed to show how this is so. Even if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that speech cannot be explained via mutation and natural selection, such a proof would not invalidate evolutionary theory.

Huh? How can you possibly have something that can even be called speech without language? What does this language-free speech you speak of even look like?

Are you aware that you are making careless logical fallacies like these all over the place? Which prominent biologists say that? Cite a source please; otherwise it's a thinly-veiled appeal to authority.

Indeed, but that contradicts joseph's assertion that speech is only human. So I'm trying to figure out how he thinks languageless speech is still uniquely human.

Oh hell, I'm not a specialist. But thanks for the compliment anyway I studied linguistics a bit during my undergrad at Cornell and have more than a passing interest in it, and I don't think I've represented otherwise here. If I have, my apologies. So my knowledge may still be limited in scope in some cases but I'll do my best. I'm not so sure that I can answer that, but in MY slightly more-informed opinion "speech" seems to be sufficiently vague that it's hard to pin down an exact difference. By your definition, "speech" could be audible communication, and I suppose that's as good a definition as any, even though it would give Joseph here all kinds of seizures. Linguistics students and professionals prefer to use "natural language" to describe human communication as it's a far more precise label for just what it is they study, even though linguistics disciplines vary as far and wide as some of the "purer" sciences.

I will grant you that there are many problems in various disciplines of linguistics that are just an absolute pain in the ass to describe adequately and as such are still the subject of active research and study just because natural language is so complex.That does not, however, make language or "speech" a thorn in the side of the theory of evolution.Nor has it prevented many professional linguists from disciplined study and observation of human language, something that I daresay might be impossible if it's not a function of mind.Nor does it mean linguistics hasn't made leaps and bounds in pinning down certain aspects of human language.Nor does it explain why the aspect of "speech" that is uniquely human is something transcendent of natural language as you claim.

Well, Linguistics is variously considered a social science and and anthropological study, so for the most part the discipline says that's a matter for the biologists. Linguistics itself tends to concern itself with language as used by humans, though that doesn't divorce the field from studying cases like Koko and Alex. Linguists who study Koko and Alex will generally assert that there is a big difference between their grasp of language and the complexity and expressiveness of human languages. Gotta be careful with this one. You could draw a parallel between this and wings and say that wings are a uniquely avian characteristic, while discounting bats and flying squirrels and human-built aircraft by saying that those aren't truly wings despite providing some form of flight, because wings are uniquely avian. The degree of complexity and expressiveness of human language does exceed any form of language that other animals seem to have or be able to learn. Joseph's cardinal non-sequitur, however, is claiming this observation checkmates any possibility that it could have occurred via mutation and natural selection and he has consistently failed to show why this is the case. Again, linguistics is largely an anthropological discipline with roots in history, sociology, biology, psychology, etc. As such it tends to limit itself to human language for the most part but there are certainly disciplines within linguistics that are interested in non-human communication and how it relates to human communication. Depends on the linguist To be sure, a "fundamental difference" isn't all that scary. Wings and legs are fundamentally different from one another but they certainly have a common predecessor.

Just repeating a claim doesn't make it truer. You haven't yet substantiated either of these. Parrots are far better at mimicking sounds than humans. It's easy to imagine how this is beneficial both for predation and defense. But if their brains evolved to the complexity necessary to process language on the same level humans do, they would no longer be able to fly due to the disproportionate size of their heads. It would be more burdensome than beneficial. There has to be a net benefit with respect to the environment for natural selection to favor a mutation.

Ahem. So what? So scientists dispute the origin of language as used by humans. It's an open question.Where in the paper do the scientists/linguists say, "Well geez. This is just embarrassing. This means the whole theory is evolution is wrong. We've been spinning our wheels for the last 200 years. We really feel just awful about all this. Sorry to confuse everybody."?Like it or not, mere open questions are not the silver bullet that kills evolution for which you so earnestly hope. Computer scientists still don't know whether P=NP or not, but surprise, computers still work.

Nah. Even discovering beyond all rational doubt that everything just exploded onto the scene in 6 days would simply solve abiogenesis for us and would win the Nobel Prize for the discoverer. But thus far no evidence exists to support this.I don't think scientists or linguists will ever discover beyond all reasonable doubt the exact origins of human speech. Written language is almost certainly much more recent than spoken language, and humans are known to adopt beneficial tools extremely rapidly, so that can easily be used to infer why it looks like written language just popped into existence relatively quickly... because it probably did. It's far harder, perhaps impossible, to trace the origins of spoken language because sound rarely leaves any evidence. All we have to go on is the shape and size of some bones (which is more telling than you might think, but not so much as to be conclusive). Then please explain why certain types of brain damage cause a human to lose the ability to speak. Oh no, linguistics knows what it knows. It also knows what it doesn't know. It's not "confused" as you claim. You're inventing words now? It doesn't make a word mean something if you put a suffix on it.Coarsely, language is a carrier for thoughts and concepts, and speech is a mechanism by which it is delivered. If animals are devoid of speech, then speech is NOT meaningless grunts and hisses, because animals can do this. It is something else, but you've failed to identify what.