Human and Non-Human Language & Comminication

 AI, Extraterrestrials, Terrestrial Animals -- I seem to have widened my linguistic scope, recently.

Last spring I adopted a new dog.  We enrolled in an obedience class this fall.  The teacher suggested a book, "On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals", by Turid Rugaas.  Animals commnicate a great deal with body signals which humans can learn to understand and even use, themselves.  Turid illustrates her book with many photos illustrating these signals.

I immediately recognized one that Oliver, my Jack Russell (now deceased) made great use of -- looking away.  I would call him to come in the house.  He would immediately look in the other direction.  "I don't hear you and I don't understand you and since I'm not looking at you I don't see you waving your hands in my direction.  So I'm not really disobeying you by continuing to run around the yard."  

Just like a little kid!

Two polite dog strangers will carefully ingnore each other and pretend they don't really notice one another until they've had the chance, little-by-little, to check each other out.

When I offer my corgi-mix, Daisy, a treat with a pill hidden in the middle, she turns her head away from it.  "No, I know what it is and I won't eat it."  I offer from another angle having added a dab of peanut butter.  She turns her head away again. "No! The answer is still No!"

In an earlier blog post I mentioned the fact that all humans have the point gesture, whether done with a finger or other body part, as a universal symbol meaning "Look at that," or "It's that."  As for dogs, not just a "Pointer" will "point" but they all do whether by pawing at the door to ask to go out or by nosing their empty kibble dish to say "feed me".  

This makes me wonder about humans shaking the head side-to-side to say "No". It is not universal among all cultures.  In a few places, nodding means "No", while shaking means "Yes", plus there are various other head wobbles used to impart feelings.  Still....

I am finally in the process of reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker, or at least parts of it.  Pinker and Chomsky are no longer considered revolutionary but the book is still interesting.

As for cats, as far as I can see, they sometimes point with just their eyes.  You really have to pay attention!  And when it comes to saying good morning to my cat, I'm still trying to perfect my slow blink.

My September Entry...

 was a review of the movie "Arrival" which ended up posted on imdb.com rather than here on Blogger.com.

Better late than never.  Here's that review, below, title and all.

A genuine sci-fi movie...

......that dealt with ideas rather than bug-eyed monsters, terrifying plot twists and acrobatic physical action. For that reason I gave it a 6 even though some of the dialog was cheesy and scenes cliched.

I was a bit disappointed in the linguistic analysis effort. The linguist did determine, relatively quickly, that the aliens communicated with visual (lightwave-based) symbols rather than verbal/aural (sound-wave based) symbols. (I didn't see any effort to determine if the aliens had the same visual spectrum that we do but let's assume they were simply able to use our visual spectrum.) Having done that you would think she might have tried a graphic of a hydrogen atom as a starting point for mutual understanding. Or perhaps a depiction of our solar system and galaxy -- especially as one, essential question was "Where do you come from?" How hard would it have been for us to point to us, then to earth, and the aliens to add to the drawing their own far-away home?

One member of the science team indicated that they were able to repeat back to us a series of prime numbers even though they "couldn't understand our algebra". What number symbols was he using? And what numbering system? -- base 7 (since they had 7 legs and 7 fingers)? Or binary (which might have made the most sense)? As I said, some of the dialog was cheesy.

Also -- we, meaning not only the Americans but the Chinese and other countries, managed to mis-interpret their word "gift" for "weapon" -- a rather grave mistake, and one not believable given the team's ingenuity in determining the meaning of other, more ambiguous words.

But that misinterpretation was necessary to add at least a little bit of action and suspense.

And then, the "gift" turned out to be tlhe language, itself, which, if you mastered it, gave you the ability to see all your life at once, past-present-and-future. Yes, learning a different language or even increased vocabulary in your native tongue, can enhance your ability to perceive and analyze the world. But seeing the future is a bit much to ask of linguistics, alone!

All in all, this movie was a good effort, even though flawed. I was glad I watched it.