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Animals do not have language in the same way that humans do. Yes, the may have a way to communicate with each other by sounding their voices in different pitches, and yes, some apes can learn sign language, but that does not mean that they understand language in the way humans do. Human language has grammar, syntax, and recursion in a way that animals do not.


Watch the video in the post. The prairie dogs appear to have a basic syntax and grammar ( [threat] [shape] [color] ), according to the researchers.


That sounds like it could be generalized to [noun] [adjective] [adjective]. Notice the lack of verbs, prepositions, or markers for subordinate clauses.

This seems much closer to a code than an actual language.


To be fair, some humans have trouble grasping recursion. I can't speculate as to how or why, since I've always failed to grasp their fail to grasp.


Do we have evidence of that? At the moment it seems like we are still very early in the process of understanding non-human language.




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