Search results – LINGUIST

100 matches.
Item #DateTimeRecs Subject
00100292/02/0413:452063.110 Proto-World and Popular Linguistics
00101092/02/0607:392353.117 Proto-World I
00101192/02/0607:421473.118 Proto-World II
00105692/02/2008:091703.165 FYI: Galician, Phonics, CAL
00109992/03/0413:49753.207 Summary on the la -> el rule
00118292/03/2407:341303.288 Responses: Morphophonemics, Slang, Evolution
00118892/03/2708:581413.294 Gender
00119492/03/3000:041363.300 Teaching, Discourse, Evolution
00133392/05/2611:421953.436 Innateness
00133692/05/2611:482293.439 Requests for Commentators
00133892/05/2708:521893.441 Rules, Innateness
00134692/06/0209:263293.449 Innateness, rules
00139992/06/1609:19893.502 Predicates, Comparatives
00162192/09/2323:481803.722 Reanalyses: Last Posting
00165192/10/0709:07993.752 Sexism in Language
00165292/10/0709:123163.753 Oaxaca Project Update
00166692/10/0907:231913.767 Oaxaca, Language, Culture, Nationalism and Peace
00168492/10/1709:331313.785 The Preservation of Languages
00169892/10/1910:423203.798 Language Preservation
00170192/10/2007:561543.802 Language Preservation
00171092/10/2300:042193.811 Language Preservation
00189592/12/1611:072023.992 Summary: Wannabe
00242293/06/2110:302754.492 Sum: Farang
00248993/07/1509:141114.558 Just for Fun: Ferenghi, Hungarian
00249393/07/2607:493054.562 Sum: Gender Markedness
00251993/07/2911:222214.588 Oxford Text Archive Update
00270893/09/3007:531504.777 Natural Phonology, Linguistic Science
00292093/11/2314:265204.982 Sum: Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns
00292193/11/2317:031114.989 Qs: Typing errors, Chinese, Children's speech
00302393/12/2306:391264.1090 Qs: Chinook Jargon, Pluralization, Arigato, Semantic Change
00307194/01/0518:09595.25 Summary: Polysemy
00313194/01/2211:101025.85 Calls: reviewers of _Beyond Modularity_
00314794/01/3008:323345.101 Linguistic bedtime reading
00362094/05/1921:051045.572 A linguist's nightmare
00368094/06/0208:302755.623 Review: _The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language_
00369694/06/0607:332435.646 The popularization of linguistics
00376794/06/2106:542845.718 WHAT GOOD IS LINGUISTICS ?
00386494/07/1808:081495.813 Sum: Ape Language, Fricative voicing asymmetries
00387094/07/1906:301345.822 Varia: Linguist-bashing, Lx in the media & endangered languages
00388194/07/2106:37925.833 Varia: Popularizing linguistics, Linguistics-bashing
00389294/07/2517:581115.821 Linguistics in the media and endangered languages
00393194/08/1209:361265.881 Qs: Before Babel, What about Altaic?, Primate accents, PD parser
00434394/11/1316:57525.1290 Sum: Who animal
00452494/12/1817:082055.1467 Qs: Sapir-Whorf, Nominalizations, Metaling, Lang/Anthropoidea
00459795/01/1407:332936.28 Sum: Anthropoid linguistic ability - Interim summary
00463095/01/1617:252386.61 Linguistics as speciesist?
00464995/01/2010:511706.80 FYI: Ape lang, LaTex and Macitosh, Corrections, Modern Greek
00465295/01/2011:16956.84 Linguistics, species, and poetry
00465795/01/2114:141586.88 Language and species
00465995/01/2221:09826.90 Comparative Method
00467795/01/2521:572636.111 Language and Species
00469395/01/2821:271076.124 Language and species
00470195/01/3123:38916.136 Language and species
00475895/02/1112:373326.189 Innateness/ Language & Species
00476495/02/1207:131606.195 Sum: References on non-human language
00478595/02/1401:101106.215 Comparative Method
00479995/02/1606:472086.229 Confs: European ACL Tutorials 1995
00482095/02/1816:261386.250 Language & Species, DNA and Natural Language
00487495/02/2616:413336.304 Sum: Discussion of human and non-human language
00492595/03/1122:491546.355 Human and Non-human Languages
00495895/03/1812:212816.388 FYI: AAAS Annual Meeting in Atlanta
00500895/03/2612:211766.438 Fun: How to make linguistic theory, Pre-Proto-World Unveiled
00514695/04/1712:371706.576 Varia: Lang in Scince Fiction, Lang & Religion, Kind-of
00565095/08/1010:211946.1070, Disc: Sex/Lang, Re: 1023
00567795/08/1408:591276.1097, Disc: Sex/Lang, Re: 1088, 1091
00571395/08/2011:492466.1133, Books: New book on Austronesians
00598995/10/1309:382146.1412, Qs: Grammar, Viable, Anaphora, Chinese, Fonts
00634095/12/2110:29826.1763, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)
00634295/12/2110:432476.1765, FYI: Linguistic Diversity, Computer-Mediated Discourse
00636395/12/2318:232046.1786, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)
00651196/01/3000:232627.144, FYI: Systemic-Functional WWW, Apes & Language
00678696/03/2019:013007.419, Disc: Grammatical gender and feminism
00683296/03/2619:074347.465, FYI: Endangered languages documentation mailbox
00684896/03/2910:391877.481, Qs: Ordinal numerals, Philippines, Sapir-Whorf, Thou and you
00691896/04/1312:453377.551, Disc: Outline of evolution/emmergence (Was re:Formalism)
00693196/04/1609:054727.564, Disc: Grammatical Gender
00693296/04/1609:281637.565, Disc: Evolution & Linguistics (was formalism)
00705896/05/1513:162587.691, Disc: Syntactic Typology
00720696/06/0707:372657.838, Sum: Uvular affricate
00726796/06/1722:141667.905, Qs: Certification Exams, "Addressee", Dialogue Systems
00749296/08/1207:513127.1130, Sum: Working Dialogue Systems
00766896/09/2017:203487.1307, Calls: Human-computer conversations, Applied NLP (revised)
00779296/10/1321:272117.1433, Sum: Cognitive science intro book
00788396/10/2808:222967.1524, Disc: Natural language
00794896/11/0909:471047.1589, Calls: New journal on evolution of communication
00825797/01/2116:153008.65, FYI: Parser Challenge
00831797/01/2813:48708.125, Disc: Myths in linguistics
00842497/02/1800:391628.229, Disc: The English Future
00857497/03/1809:481588.378, Qs: Lg origins, Armenian, Job lists
00865297/04/0512:471158.458, Books: Available for Review
00865697/04/0512:471178.458, Books: Available for Review
00891897/05/1310:317988.714, Confs: Genetic Programming 1997 (GP-97)
00908597/06/1513:29768.881, Disc: Punctuation
00922497/07/0708:50948.1020, Sum: Empathetic deixis comments
00965297/10/0823:27988.1447, Books: Evolution of Communication
00968097/10/1217:472818.1475, Disc: Women's Language
00978297/11/0313:361388.1577, TOC: New Journal: Evolution of Communication
00985497/11/1715:382868.1649, Calls: ORAGE'98, Human Cognition
00994297/12/0410:552468.1737, Calls: German Ling., Computation/Metaphors/Analogy
01001897/12/2111:482398.1813, Disc: Prescriptivism
Item #1002 (4 Feb 1992 13:45) - 3.110 Proto-World and Popular Linguistics
 Chance similarities are far more of a problem when comparing languages than
when comparing species. So much so that syntactic characteristics are viewed
as unreliable guides to grouping languages even over comparatively short
time periods. And you have to worry about borrowing between distantly related
languages (but not between distantly related species); if you find words in
common between two reconstructed proto-languages, it may point to a common

Item #1010 (6 Feb 1992 07:39) - 3.117 Proto-World I
 The discussion on Proto-World seems to be unaware of or has neglected to
mention that Derek Bickerton's boo _Language and Species_ presents a
convincing argument about the origin of language that is written in a
For I know all the mythologic functions Dumezilian,
And I can trace our species back to ancestors reptilian;
In all, I seek the broadest view, for by my ideology

Item #1011 (6 Feb 1992 07:42) - 3.118 Proto-World II
 mo sapiens had to have evolved in several different places at once. If this was
indeed the case, then homo sapiens would be several different species. If I ma
y get lost in analogy-land for a moment, consider the virtual absence of marsup

Item #1056 (20 Feb 1992 08:09) - 3.165 FYI: Galician, Phonics, CAL
 late 19th disagreements with Darwin's remarks on language origins in Origin of
Species. Muller, I believe,was being sarcastically skeptical of the idea that
human language could have been distilled from the cries of animals and the song

Item #1099 (4 Mar 1992 13:49) - 3.207 Summary on the la -> el rule
 of, let us say, carriage used in some culture or an exotic
species of gazelle, or something, was called arba, would
you then want to say 'el arba' or 'la arba'?

Item #1182 (24 Mar 1992 07:34) - 3.288 Responses: Morphophonemics, Slang, Evolution
 It seems that some people tend to assume that language arose
at the same time as the human species, either because they
define Homo sapiens sapiens as the first hominid with language
published a paper not too long ago which sketches a way of
reasoning which would make language PREDATE the species, and it
is not hard to come up with a scenario on which language came
(long) after the species.

Item #1188 (27 Mar 1992 08:58) - 3.294 Gender
 Poul Anderson's sf novel >The Day Of Their Return< uses heesh/heesh's/heesh
to refer to a genderless species, the Didonians.

Item #1194 (30 Mar 1992 04:20) - 3.300 Teaching, Discourse, Evolution
 and _H. sapiens neanderthalis_ about 400,000 years ago. This argument
is based on extensive comparisons of the basicrania of the two sub-species
which show that the long vertical pharynx of _H. sapiens sapiens_ must
warming cold air, however, so arguing that it is the ancestral state for
that subspecies and _H. sapiens sapiens_ may be mistaken. There have
also been criticisms of the vocla tract reconstruction for _H. sapiens
were that short, they couldn't swallowed, implying a much shorter interval
in the fossil record for that subspecies than it observed. In any case,'
this evidence only applies to the question of when a system of speech
> published a paper not too long ago which sketches a way of
> reasoning which would make language PREDATE the species,

Item #1333 (26 May 1992 11:42) - 3.436 Innateness
I don't have my copy of "The Origin of Species" here, so I can't give a real
quote,

Item #1336 (26 May 1992 11:48) - 3.439 Requests for Commentators
Fundamental to spatial knowledge in all species are the representations
underlying object recognition, object search, and navigation through
space. What sets humans apart from other species is our ability to
express spatial experience through language. In this target article, we

Item #1338 (27 May 1992 08:52) - 3.441 Rules, Innateness
 to anyone) but would also like to publicly wonder why the question of
of the innateness of specific bird species' songs is not questioned b
by those who question are argue against built in hard-wired genetic
language specifics. One would think that the more neurologically
complex the species the more one would have to have such geneticallyj
determined capabilities.

Item #1346 (2 Jun 1992 09:26) - 3.449 Innateness, rules
 >...would also like to publicly wonder why the question of
>of the innateness of specific bird species' songs is not questioned b
>by those who question are argue against built in hard-wired genetic
>language specifics. One would think that the more neurologically
>complex the species the more one would have to have such geneticallyj
>determined capabilities.
learn, the less you're born knowing -- and vice versa. The fact that
humans are born more helpless than any other species, and take longer
(by orders of magnitude) to mature, would seem to indicate a tradeoff

Item #1399 (16 Jun 1992 09:19) - 3.502 Predicates, Comparatives
 movement rules, which is pretty convincing evidence that they belong to the
same syntactic species.

Item #1621 (23 Sep 1992 23:48) - 3.722 Reanalyses: Last Posting
 and its plural, for many speakers, is _op"enki_. But some speakers have
reanalyzed it as _op-"enok, using the young-of-species suffix (as in ut"enok
'duckling'), as shown by the fact that they pluralize it as _opjata_ (same

Item #1651 (7 Oct 1992 09:07) - 3.752 Sexism in Language
I don't think it needs a stereotype! It's a cross-species truism that
good mating displays are important to reproductive success.

Item #1652 (7 Oct 1992 09:12) - 3.753 Oaxaca Project Update
 or so languages of the Americas will be gone. The wholesale
extinction of plant and animal species reduces genetic diversity;
the wholesale extinction of languages reduces cultural diversity;
disappearance of languages, and the reduction of cultural
diversity, as threatening our very survival as a species. As
languages vanish, we lose the knowledge that speakers of those

Item #1666 (9 Oct 1992 07:23) - 3.767 Oaxaca, Language, Culture, Nationalism and Peace
 >or so languages of the Americas will be gone. The wholesale
>extinction of plant and animal species reduces genetic diversity;
>the wholesale extinction of languages reduces cultural diversity;

Item #1684 (17 Oct 1992 09:33) - 3.785 The Preservation of Languages
 threatened languages to preserve their language, it is often argued that the
case is like that of threatened biological species; this argument was used
recently in Linguist by Peter Svenonius. But we surely can't use this as a
this kind of work to deploy it at all. The difference between languages and
biological species is that when a species dies out, its genes die out with
it, and we may have lost thereby important material for creating useful

Item #1698 (19 Oct 1992 10:42) - 3.798 Language Preservation
Dick Hudson objects to the analogy with threatened biological species in
arguments for the preservation of language diversity:
> The difference between languages and
>biological species is that when a species dies out, its genes die out with
>it, and we may have lost thereby important material for creating useful
about the behaviour of complex ecological systems when changes occur, and
the basic modesty and respect for other species that our limited
understanding ought to inspire.

Obviously language communities are not biological species: when we draw the
analogy, we are (as so often when talking about language) speaking
I agree with Dick Hudson that we should be careful about using
shaky analogies like the biological species one in debates on
language endangerment. Michael Krauss' way of using figures of
endangered species (in the recent number of Language) to point
up the fact that the situation with languages is much worse
in favor of language preservation to draw an analogy between
preservation of languages and preservation of species.

> The difference between languages and
>biological species is that when a species dies out, its genes die out with
>it, and we may have lost thereby important material for creating useful

Item #1701 (20 Oct 1992 07:56) - 3.802 Language Preservation
 >The difference between languages and
>biological species is that when a species dies out, its genes die out with
>it, and we may have lost thereby important material for creating useful

Item #1710 (23 Oct 1992 04:53) - 3.811 Language Preservation
 them out." That is one result of considering only the "utility"
of a people. Analogies with respect to cultures, species, and
languages I leave to the reader.

Item #1895 (16 Dec 1992 11:07) - 3.992 Summary: Wannabe
 Fortune', does that make you a Vannabe? (Or if you've set your sights on the
Donald, are you an Ivanabe? Are the more obscure South American species of
lizards just iguana wannabes? I know, time to quit.)

Item #2422 (21 Jun 1993 10:30) - 4.492 Sum: Farang
 >them by a being from an advanced civilization. The being offers to
>destroy the entire Ferenghi species, but the Federation officer
>declines, noting that "we used to be like that, once." If this sounds

Item #2489 (15 Jul 1993 09:14) - 4.558 Just for Fun: Ferenghi, Hungarian
 farang meaning foreigner and similiar words in a number of languages.
People speculated about the origin of Ferenghi, the name of a species
of traders who appear on the televesion shows Star Trek: The Next

Item #2493 (26 Jul 1993 07:49) - 4.562 Sum: Gender Markedness
 word 'man' very strictly and consistently to refer to any member of the
species Homo sapiens. Specifically male and female members thereof, if one
wants to specify their sex, are referred to respectively as 'mels' and
'fems'. However, there is i believe some spillover -- use of the morphemes
'mel' and 'fem' to mean 'male' and 'female' of any (sapient) Terran species
-- i'm pretty sure i remember a female dolphin being referred to as a

Item #2519 (29 Jul 1993 11:22) - 4.588 Oxford Text Archive Update
 Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim; Nigger of the Narcissus
Charles Darwin: Origin of Species
Arthur Conan Doyle: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Casebook of Sherlock

Item #2708 (30 Sep 1993 07:53) - 4.777 Natural Phonology, Linguistic Science
As the member of an endangered species (living, practicing Natural
Phonologists) I must protest Peter Salus' characterization of us as

Item #2920 (23 Nov 1993 14:26) - 4.982 Sum: Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns
 a semblance of morals by calling male numerals female, female numerals
male, and having the female of the species wear a chador, and the male
a beard, or at least a moustache.

Item #2921 (23 Nov 1993 17:03) - 4.989 Qs: Typing errors, Chinese, Children's speech
 of my examples come from E-mail messages--others from my own and students'
writing. In brief, these are a species of error MUCH less like normal speech
errors and much more like speech in so-called agrammatic aphasia. These errors

Item #3023 (23 Dec 1993 06:39) - 4.1090 Qs: Chinook Jargon, Pluralization, Arigato, Semantic Change
 more rarely in the opposite direction; polysemy between generic fish or
a common fish species and meat/animal is also known in a couple of languages.
I am looking for parallel or related examples elsewhere in the world,

Item #3071 (5 Jan 1994 18:09) - 5.25 Summary: Polysemy
 Australian Aboriginal languages in some areas, elsewhere in the world.
I mentioned also seeing fish(generic) or fish(species)=food in general
referred to for North America.

Item #3131 (22 Jan 1994 11:10) - 5.85 Calls: reviewers of _Beyond Modularity_
 developmental stages, Fodor, modularity, nativism, Piaget,
representational redescription, species differences.

of representations underlying the structure of behavior in other
species.

Item #3147 (30 Jan 1994 08:32) - 5.101 Linguistic bedtime reading
 Berlitz, Charles. 1982. Native tongues. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.
Bickerton, Derek. 1990. Language and species. Chicago: Chicago
University Press.

Item #3620 (19 May 1994 21:05) - 5.572 A linguist's nightmare
 turned out differently we would have entitled
this speech register "The Sweet Music of the Species"
(following Darwin) rather than "Motherese."

Item #3680 (2 Jun 1994 08:30) - 5.623 Review: _The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language_
 universals and which thereby de-emphasize whatever biological (including
cognitive) capacities are common to a species.

from impairment, from neural-net modelling, and from comparisons with the
skills of other species. Together they offer compelling evidence that
something, indeed, is innate--something that plays out as language

Item #3696 (6 Jun 1994 07:33) - 5.646 The popularization of linguistics
 socially by suppressing the opposing viewpoint. Consider the issue of
the origin of species, and the infamous Creationist/Evolutionist argue-
ment. Creationism is a valid viewpoint, and one still held by many

Item #3767 (21 Jun 1994 06:54) - 5.718 WHAT GOOD IS LINGUISTICS ?
Languages are good (we as a species and in any other way you want to
look at it NEED it)

Item #3864 (18 Jul 1994 08:08) - 5.813 Sum: Ape Language, Fricative voicing asymmetries
Derek Bickerton, _Language & Species_, Chicago 1990 (University
of Chicago Press)

Item #3870 (19 Jul 1994 06:30) - 5.822 Varia: Linguist-bashing, Lx in the media & endangered languages
 extinction really works. Scientists, and the lay public,
understand what is meant by a loss of 10% or 20% of all species in
a 100 year time frame, and they are horrified by the prospect.
'language-determines-thought' in that a lesser diversity of language
determines less diverse thought 'available' to us (ie a species).
Of course, I gave an involuntary alveolar click or two at the way

Item #3881 (21 Jul 1994 06:37) - 5.833 Varia: Popularizing linguistics, Linguistics-bashing
 current topic) extinction of languages is likened to extinction of
species. Then when the public and other lay pundits say "Oh, I get it,"
and gallop off on some ramification of the metaphor that we find not so
To paraphrase Sapir, all analogies leak. I predict that, as
uncomfortable ramifications of the species-extinction metaphor become
entrenched in public perception of the problem of language abandonment

Item #3892 (25 Jul 1994 17:58) - 5.821 Linguistics in the media and endangered languages
 extinction really works. Scientists, and the lay public,
understand what is meant by a loss of 10% or 20% of all species in
a 100 year time frame, and they are horrified by the prospect.
'language-determines-thought' in that a lesser diversity of language
determines less diverse thought 'available' to us (ie a species).
Of course, I gave an involuntary alveolar click or two at the way

Item #3931 (12 Aug 1994 09:36) - 5.881 Qs: Before Babel, What about Altaic?, Primate accents, PD parser
 vocalizations, nor [sic] that vocal dialects found in
different subpopulations of the same species are learned
traditions. In these respects, primates have up to the

Item #4343 (13 Nov 1994 16:57) - 5.1290 Sum: Who animal
 I would like to thank all those who wrote in concerning the question
of whether 'who' or 'what' is used to ask about species of animals
in various languages (I am sorry but at the moment I cannot locate
I would be interested in hearing about any more examples of a language
that uses 'who' to ask for the species of an animal, as in 'What/Who
is that', when looking at an animal in a zoo, or 'What/Who bit you?',

Item #4524 (18 Dec 1994 17:08) - 5.1467 Qs: Sapir-Whorf, Nominalizations, Metaling, Lang/Anthropoidea
 linguistics that language is the exclusive prerogative of Homo sapiens,
only that it's an important part of the package that defines that species.

Item #4597 (14 Jan 1995 07:33) - 6.28 Sum: Anthropoid linguistic ability - Interim summary
 ) that language is the exclusive prerogative of Homo sapiens, only that
) it's an important part of the package that defines that species.
)
dy how much of human language is necessary to the general phenomenon of
language and how much is incidental and of relevance only to our species;
it might also enable us to talk about the 'innateness' of human linguistic
of communication and use. ... The basic design of human languages is
*not* dictated by use, and we can easily conceive of species that would
possess a *radically* different design for language and would communicate

Item #4630 (16 Jan 1995 17:25) - 6.61 Linguistics as speciesist?
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.61 Linguistics as speciesist?


Subject: 6.61 Linguistics as speciesist?


But let's change the word "racist" to *species-ist*, since 1) racist
doesn't exactly fit cross-species issues except in the older
meaning of "human race", 2) species-ist points more clearly to our
anthropocentrism, and 3) I no longer like to use the current concept
consider whether linguistics may be guilty of not overt but *covert*
and institutionalized species-ism, embedded so pervasively as to be
invisible to some. Moonhawk's Institutionalized Species-ism
Hypothesis predicts that unwitting species-ism will be reflected:

around with sensitive eyes and you'll see the subtle signs of this
species-ism everywhere. No one has to plot or say anything overtly
species-ist because, given the totality of our system, animals can
never break through our self-imposed cultural DEFINITIONAL language

Just so that we may see this species-ism more clearly, first a teaching
I've posted before, and then a brief outline for a model from a
species-inclusive point of view that flows from the teaching.


This is what a non-species-ist (Cheyenne) language origin story looks
like -- all of nature communicating in a common way, and then
Humbolt, founder of linguistics as a university discipline, observed:
"Man, regarded as an animal, belongs to one of the singing species;
but his notes are always associated with ideas." Non-species-ist
accounts are alway inclusive and evolutionary, not exclusive.
longer designate it by merely the bare word *language* in the old
exclusivist, species-ist way.


The degree to which the above species-inclusive formulations may
tend to disturb you quite faithfully reflects, I would guess, the
degree to which you are embedded in the institutionalized
species-ism so pervasive in linguistics, since these formulations
are quite possibly the first truly *alternative* origins theory

Item #4649 (20 Jan 1995 10:51) - 6.80 FYI: Ape lang, LaTex and Macitosh, Corrections, Modern Greek
 In later section, the work of Derek Bickerton ("Language
and Species," 1990 [University of Chicago Press] is summarized.
Bickerton admits that Kanzi, other apes and young children

Item #4652 (20 Jan 1995 11:16) - 6.84 Linguistics, species, and poetry
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.84 Linguistics, species, and poetry


Subject: 6.84 Linguistics, species, and poetry

From: lxalvarz@udc.es (Celso Alvarez Caccamo)
Subject: Linguistics, species, and poetry

From: edwards@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Jane A. Edwards)
Subject: Re: species-specific (REVISED!)

From: lxalvarz@udc.es (Celso Alvarez Caccamo)
Subject: Linguistics, species, and poetry

Moonhawk's extremely long message about linguists' species-ism
is very nice, soothingly poetic for a list like ours.
From: edwards@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Jane A. Edwards)
Subject: Re: species-specific (REVISED!)

Dwight Bolinger (_Aspects of Language_, 2nd ed., p. 4, 1975):
"LANGUAGE IS SPECIES-SPECIFIC. It is a uniquely human trait, shared by
cultures so diverse and by individuals physically and mentally so
The former question requires an investigation into the specific nature
of the species Homo sapiens; the latter requires a programmatic
disregard of species differences. The former will turn to anatomy,
physiology, and developmental studies for an answer (all of which are

Item #4657 (21 Jan 1995 14:14) - 6.88 Language and species
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.88 Language and species


Subject: 6.88 Language and species

From: Marion.Kee@A.NL.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Species discussion

From: Marion.Kee@A.NL.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Species discussion

How do our limitations influence our perceptions of how members
of other species communicate between themselves?

To comment on Celso Alvarez-Caccamo's response: I may not be willing
to be a species chauvinist, but I am willing to be an intelligence
chauvinist (with a fairly broad view of what consitutes intelligent
After all, the discovery of counterparts to language in closely related
species would be important for the study of cognition in both man and
ape, for some ofthe same sort of reasons comparative studies of closely

Item #4659 (22 Jan 1995 21:09) - 6.90 Comparative Method
 Biologists have developped for a long time a whole set of notions, from
species and genus to families, classes and orders. It seems, that such
kind of differentiated terminology would do something good to historical

Item #4677 (25 Jan 1995 21:57) - 6.111 Language and Species
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.111 Language and Species


Subject: 6.111 Language and Species

From: lgorbet@eros.unm.edu
Subject: Re: 6.88 Language and species


The discussion of whether other species have "language" is very much like other
discussion we are seeing currently. That is, if treated as an attempt to

a) other species have something more like language than some of us have wanted
to admit for whom defining our "uniqueness" or specialness seems to be

b) other species have perhaps less of what we call language than some of us
have wanted to admit for whom proving the specialness of some particular simian
species is important

ethnocentric, for not assuming that the meanings of acts or communications are
"obvious". Especially cross-species. What is the interpretation for example
of Orcas marking the spot where the Sun will first strike the land each day?

On the whole, our learning how to communicate with other species is almost
certainly at this time limited more by our abilities to get outside our own
differences in individual musical talent. Single birds will apprentice
themselves to skilled masters. In any given year, perhaps 90% of some species
will be singing the chic new song of the year, 10% will still be singing last
A second book is perhaps better known via talk shows, but it raises other
issues of cross-species understanding.

to be accumulated mostly by people who take a positive attitude towards the
capabilities of other species, probably not as much by those who emotionally
want to deny the possibility. But biases in either direction can still lead to

Personally, I want to see more cross-species understanding because it may
contribute to a more sensitive and responsible treatment of the earth and of
nature, to less selfishness and destructiveness by the human species. Like
empathy of any other kind even between members of the same species.

From: lgorbet@eros.unm.edu
Subject: Re: 6.88 Language and species

David Pesetsky defends various linguist-writers against the charge that the
oft-made claim for the uniqueness of "language" to the human species was an
a priori one:
course, identifying even very concrete, non-displaced meanings often
requires sophisticated knowledge of the species in question's general
behavior, ecology, etc. In fact, I suspect most specialists in the study
of communication in more complex species would assert that knowledge of
*individuals* is often a prerequisite.
assumptions we use in interpreting human communications are not valid in
studying other species, but omission of those assumptions---or, rather, of
the equivalent assumptions appropriate to the species we are
studying---renders the results of our investigations of human and non-human
studying human language, even child language, using identical methods to
those used (or advocated!) for the study of other species. Much that is
pretty uncontroversial would become quite elusive, especially if we didn't
already know the answers. Arguably, many linguists insist that other
species must be studied using just the methods that Chomsky criticized in
his review of _Verbal Behavior_. None of this disproves the uniqueness

Item #4693 (28 Jan 1995 21:27) - 6.124 Language and species
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.124 Language and species


Subject: 6.124 Language and species

From: j.guy@trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: Language and species

From: j.guy@trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: Language and species

Item #4701 (31 Jan 1995 23:38) - 6.136 Language and species
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.136 Language and species


Subject: 6.136 Language and species

From: benji wald (IBENAWJ@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: Re: 6.124 Language and species

From: benji wald (IBENAWJ@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: Re: 6.124 Language and species

academic-seeming concern with the uniqueness of "humanity" -- our
mating habits should be enough to establish us uniquely as a species.
No wise-cracks please) Benji

Item #4758 (11 Feb 1995 12:37) - 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species


Subject: 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species

From: ROGER@beattie.uct.ac.za
Subject: 6.136 Language and Species

From: benji wald (IBENAWJ@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: lg & species

consumption, mating. Matching perceptual systems have evolved to guide the
animan in these activities. The selection pressure shaping each species'
perceptuomotor capacities have come, in the first instance, from physical
properties of the world. By contrast, these perceptuomotor capacities
themselves must have played a crucial role in the form of a social species'
communication system. ... Certainly, specialized neuroanatomical signaling
From: ROGER@beattie.uct.ac.za
Subject: 6.136 Language and Species

From: benji wald (IBENAWJ@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: lg & species

The language & species discussion has not recurred this week, but I
had already prepared the following, which I think would be of general

Since my last posting on the language & species
discussion I have received some interesting comments
that whatever promotes indefinite increase of the population
of a species is an evolutionary advantage, since that is supposed
to maximise the chance that at least some of the members of
the species will survive to continue the reproduction of the
species.

to this conclusion and rejected human language as ultimately
threatening to the species. Even so, I would guess that the
innateness hypothesis would predict that humans would still not
evolutionary theory prevents "defective" aberrations from arising.
The species with them would simply arise and then disappear
(relatively quickly?). However, I'm sure humans are constitutionally

Item #4764 (12 Feb 1995 07:13) - 6.195 Sum: References on non-human language
Bickerton, D. 1990. Language and Species. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

Item #4785 (14 Feb 1995 01:10) - 6.215 Comparative Method
 an algorithm called "reduced-mutation algorithm"
to amino-acid sequences from a few species (Chicken,
Kangaroo, and I forgot what else), remarking that
vs pair-wise comparison. When biologist reconstruct
the DNA from the evidence of N species, they always
rely on a matrix of the distances between those N
species, and it does not matter how those distances
are expessed, scalars, vectors, matrices, you cannot

Item #4799 (16 Feb 1995 06:47) - 6.229 Confs: European ACL Tutorials 1995
 I will provide motivation for the claim that VP ellipsis requires
syntactic reconstruction, and that it is, in fact, a species of
pseudo-gapping illustrated in 2.

Item #4820 (18 Feb 1995 16:26) - 6.250 Language & Species, DNA and Natural Language
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.250 Language & Species, DNA and Natural Language


Subject: 6.250 Language & Species, DNA and Natural Language

From: Rachel Lagunoff (IHW1009@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: Re: 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species

From: Condon Sherri L (slc6859@usl.edu)
Subject: Re: 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species

From: Rachel Lagunoff (IHW1009@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: Re: 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species

For those interested in the language and species discussion, I should mention
that I am teaching an undergraduate seminar this quarter on the very topic
From: Condon Sherri L (slc6859@usl.edu)
Subject: Re: 6.189 Innateness/ Language & Species

I think we have much to learn about cognition and communication in all
species, and we are fortunate that careful researchers are on the job!

Item #4874 (26 Feb 1995 16:41) - 6.304 Sum: Discussion of human and non-human language
 with LSA's journal), the set of all possible similar systems, in whatever
species (or machine) they may manifest themselves. This phase of the dis-
cussion began with the question of the relation between an ability to re-
ous sorts, including reflexives. (Briefly, dogs and cats are able to re-
cognize their reflections as members of their own species but consistently
treat them as 'others', behaving toward them as they would to strangers
of their own species; Roger Lass has suggested that the ability to re-
cognize the reflection as 'self' may not be evolutionarily advantageous
switch from the 'social' behaviours they would normally use to make the
acquaintance of strangers of their own species to using the mirror as a
tool for self-inspection. But there has been no evidence presented, to
'force-fed', as it were, is evidence in itself that there is a serious
difference between the cognitive systems of the two species (human and
non-human) in question, since humans pick the stuff up with almost no
man language (which has so far not happened), this would certainly prove
that the difference in species is not relevant to the nature of the lan-
guage in question, much less Language in general. But failure to accom-
teaching apes a modified version of English? A complex and highly social
species such as this has an extremely sophisticated natural communication
system of its own, yet we know very little about this ... Surely, before
would be more prudent to construct a research program aimed at mapping
out the cognitive abilities of the various species and more particularly,
their home-grown communication systems. Presumably, it's only against the
A further, related issue was the epistemological question of how to reco-
gnize behaviour in another species that is equivalent to language in hu-
mans. I remarked myself at one point, 'Human language is not purely a
not strike me as logically self-evident that all of these functions
should be served by the same system. I can imagine a species that en-
gaged in all of these behaviours but used a radically different system
time), in which an exploration party from Earth discovers an extrasolar
planet inhabited by an obviously sapient species which the explorers la-
bel 'Svants'. These people are living at roughly a Neolithic cultural/
brought along for just such eventualities gets to work trying to analyse
the Svants' 'language' and establish inter-species communication. No go.
Turns out that although both Svants and humans communicate by means of
rectly induced in the body of another Svant. In order to have any hope
of inter-species communication, the human explorers have to rely on two
peculiar individuals: a young male Svant who is as a result of a birth
(Piper, speaking through some of his characters, expresses scepticism
that a species whose principal communication system so thoroughly bypas-
ses the 'higher/rational' cognitive centers can develop very far in the
over the course of several decades established contact with a variety of
alien species and managed to negotiate profitable trade deals with seve-
ral of them in spite of the obvious language barriers (the only reason
the generally despised profession of 'linguist' is allowed to survive in
this crypto-fascist state), encounters a species that is obviously sapi-
ent and obviously endowed with something in the way of a language (if i
done with apes, dolphins, sea lions, and parrots, comparing the "accom-
plishments" of the different species to one another and to human chil-
dren. I'd like the person doing it to make the assumption, as you have,
Let us instead adopt the attitude expressed by Sherri Condon: 'I think we
have much to learn about cognition and communication in all species, and
we are fortunate that careful researchers are on the job.' Of course, as

Item #4925 (11 Mar 1995 22:49) - 6.355 Human and Non-human Languages
 From: ECOLING@aol.com
Subject: THINKING in other species

From: ECOLING@aol.com
Subject: THINKING in other species


The interesting question for me is what it means to say other species THINK,
and how they think in ways both similar and different to each other and to

Greg lists two possible interpretations for why another species might not
learn a human language:

If we do this to other humans, how much worse must we do it to other species.


So, again, it is THINKING in other species (or other humans) about which we
are really concerned. Understanding their thinking is an essential element

Item #4958 (18 Mar 1995 12:21) - 6.388 FYI: AAAS Annual Meeting in Atlanta
 this issue work together with other groups interested in cultural and
biological diversity and endangered species.

Item #5008 (26 Mar 1995 12:21) - 6.438 Fun: How to make linguistic theory, Pre-Proto-World Unveiled
 a word as Proto-World "ana" (see above), in the most ancient language,
that spoken before primates and felines evolved into different species.
We are now in a position to apply the exact property of language

Item #5146 (17 Apr 1995 12:37) - 6.576 Varia: Lang in Scince Fiction, Lang & Religion, Kind-of
 the story of humans living on an alien planet amidst three different
species of what we later discover are beings descended from humans
although they don't know it. ONe of these species has a long thin
tongue with two tips. Because of this, certain double articulations

Item #5650 (10 Aug 1995 10:21) - 6.1070, Disc: Sex/Lang, Re: 1023
 the mark and as passively unmodified" (p136). This suggests to me that
"woman" and "she" are "species" terms which females "have" as an exclusive
and special privilege, whereas males do NOT have a "species" name exclusively
their own, but instead must suffer to share a "genus" designation. It is for
this reason I prefer sometimes to call the masculine unmarked words
"tautonyms" (i.e., in biology, one name for both species and genus). The
editor of the book goes on to comment on the concept: "Thus, the general

Item #5677 (14 Aug 1995 08:59) - 6.1097, Disc: Sex/Lang, Re: 1088, 1091
 is to Puffs under "kleenex". I think my use of the term "tautonym"
focuses a little sharper on the genus-species aspect. The difference between
Coke and

Item #5713 (20 Aug 1995 11:49) - 6.1133, Books: New book on Austronesians
Homo sapiens is an Evolving Species: Origins of the Austronesians S.W.
Serjeantson and X. Gao

Item #5989 (13 Oct 1995 09:38) - 6.1412, Qs: Grammar, Viable, Anaphora, Chinese, Fonts
 Are there any data about the number of speakers necessary for a language
to be viable? I have read discussions about species viability, in terms
of breeding pairs in a population. I am wondering if analogous concerns

Item #6340 (21 Dec 1995 10:29) - 6.1763, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)
Aristotle made the point that you should not try to characterize a species
by negative differentiae because that suggests that there are no positive

Item #6342 (21 Dec 1995 10:43) - 6.1765, FYI: Linguistic Diversity, Computer-Mediated Discourse
 such organization ought to coordinate with groups working to preserve the
diversity of species and ecosystems, thereby emphasizing the mutually
reinforcing importance of cultural and biological diversity. At that time,
bridges between groups and individuals working to save languages and
cultures and those working to save species and ecosystems. All of this is
fleshed out in the organization's Statement of Purpose, which is attached
but often inseparable; and
3. That, like biological species, many languages and their variant forms
around the world are now faced with an extinction crisis whose magnitude

Item #6363 (23 Dec 1995 18:23) - 6.1786, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)
 >
> Aristotle made the point that you should not try to characterize a species
> by negative differentiae because that suggests that there are no positive

Item #6511 (30 Jan 1996 23:31) - 7.144, FYI: Systemic-Functional WWW, Apes & Language
Bickerton, D. 1990. Language and Species. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

Item #6786 (20 Mar 1996 19:01) - 7.419, Disc: Grammatical gender and feminism
 of male drivers (more prone to wrong parking than the female of the
species), has obviously proven here to be better than its
reputation. There is incidentally also no masculine correspondent to

Item #6832 (26 Mar 1996 19:07) - 7.465, FYI: Endangered languages documentation mailbox
 giving money not only for the preservation and documentation of
species of birds and insects, but also of cultures and languages. Note
that biologists (three joint societies) are demanding $3 billion a

Item #6848 (29 Mar 1996 10:39) - 7.481, Qs: Ordinal numerals, Philippines, Sapir-Whorf, Thou and you
 necessary for consciousness in humans(I don't want to repeat the
speciesism argument) I will be interested to hear and produce a
summary.

Item #6918 (13 Apr 1996 12:45) - 7.551, Disc: Outline of evolution/emmergence (Was re:Formalism)
 forgetting that the mechanisms of evolution evolve. This is where our
in traditional terms not especially "fit" species cashes in - we adapt
furthest and fastest.
selection) is quite capable of accounting for all observed differences
between species.

Item #6931 (16 Apr 1996 09:05) - 7.564, Disc: Grammatical Gender
 Might not this last process be at work in the world of domestic animals,
where the female of the species gives us the term which is mostly used as
the non-specialist common term for the sex which is most important

Item #6932 (16 Apr 1996 09:28) - 7.565, Disc: Evolution & Linguistics (was formalism)
 proposal is mechanically satisfactory because, even though we rarely if
ever today observe the evolution of new species or novel structures
(part of Eulenberg's point in Linguist 7.533), we can theoretically

Item #7058 (15 May 1996 13:16) - 7.691, Disc: Syntactic Typology
 we could know. We linguists, too, are contingent. . The philosopher Colin
McGinn recommends "species modesty"--we are, after all, only limited human
beings. But if we drop the impossible questions, and pursue laws like

Item #7206 (7 Jun 1996 07:37) - 7.838, Sum: Uvular affricate
 Klingon (tlhIngan Hol), the language created by Marc Okrand for
the warlike humanoid Klingon species of the Star Trek television
series (plural) and movies, was the inspiration of my question.

Item #7267 (17 Jun 1996 22:14) - 7.905, Qs: Certification Exams, "Addressee", Dialogue Systems
 well known, though surprisingly difficult to find running these days.
It is much harder to find modern instances of the species, despite the
flourishing state of the underlying theoretical field of dialogue

Item #7492 (12 Aug 1996 07:51) - 7.1130, Sum: Working Dialogue Systems
 >surprisingly difficult to find running these days. It is much harder to find
>modern instances of the species, despite the flourishing state of the
>underlying theoretical field of dialogue simulation, ...

Item #7668 (20 Sep 1996 17:20) - 7.1307, Calls: Human-computer conversations, Applied NLP (revised)
 representation, based on the recently decoded conversations of
humpback whales. Using interviews with several species, we present
evidence of its efficacy as an interlingua for inter-species machine
translation, and its advantages over previous, anthropocentric

Item #7792 (13 Oct 1996 21:27) - 7.1433, Sum: Cognitive science intro book
 Cheney, D. & Seyfarth, R. 1990. _How monkeys see the
world: inside the mind of another species_. Chicago: U of
Chic Press.

Item #7883 (28 Oct 1996 08:22) - 7.1524, Disc: Natural language
 as normal ("legal") expressions, i.e. there is normally no archaic "style"
as a quality perceivable by the machine. In animal languages of species
with dialect formation (e.g. some bird species) a changed set of signals
represents the same invariable set of meanings to be conveyed. "archaic"

Item #7948 (9 Nov 1996 09:47) - 7.1589, Calls: New journal on evolution of communication
 communication in general. The journal therefore accommodates studies on
various species as well as comparative, theoretical, and experimental
studies. This multidisciplinary approach will integrate research from a

Item #8257 (21 Jan 1997 16:15) - 8.65, FYI: Parser Challenge
 Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii
Author of 'Roots of Language', 'Language and Species', 'Language and
Human Behavior'.

Item #8317 (28 Jan 1997 13:48) - 8.125, Disc: Myths in linguistics
 out, the notion of a critical period was first used by ethologists
studying the origin of species-speciric behavior, with early studies
on goslings and rats. It may be a controversial hypothesis re

Item #8424 (18 Feb 1997 00:00) - 8.229, Disc: The English Future
 As another amateur linguist, I won't disagree there. But picking nits
is an important social bonding mechanism for most species of primates.

Item #8574 (18 Mar 1997 09:48) - 8.378, Qs: Lg origins, Armenian, Job lists
 (1) Human language is incomparably different from anything found in
living non-human species.

Item #8652 (5 Apr 1997 12:47) - 8.458, Books: Available for Review
 language. The development of human language use is first related to the
development of signaling in other species and to the early interaction
between the infant and his/her caregiver. The author then goes on to

Item #8656 (5 Apr 1997 12:47) - 8.458, Books: Available for Review
 language. The development of human language use is first related to the
development of signaling in other species and to the early interaction
between the infant and his/her caregiver. The author then goes on to

Item #8918 (13 May 1997 10:31) - 8.714, Confs: Genetic Programming 1997 (GP-97)
 Zhang, Byoung-Tak, and Je-Gun Joung
Enhancing Robustness of Genetic Programming at the Species
Level

Item #9085 (15 Jun 1997 13:29) - 8.881, Disc: Punctuation
 disadvantaged groups, "threatened languages" like their biologist
colleagues' "threatened species". (There are, of course, self-serving
as well as moral reasons for this.) And this may go some way to

Item #9224 (7 Jul 1997 08:50) - 8.1020, Sum: Empathetic deixis comments
 (nsg22@cus.cam.ac.uk) who referred me to Sylvia Adamson's treatment of
empathetic narrative where she treats subjectivity as a species of
deixis (Susan Wright and Dieter Stein, eds. _Subjectivity and

Item #9652 (8 Oct 1997 23:27) - 8.1447, Books: Evolution of Communication
 Bound to become a classic and to stimulate debate and research, _The
Evolution of Communication_ looks at species in their natural
environments as a way to begin to understand what the real units of

Item #9680 (12 Oct 1997 17:47) - 8.1475, Disc: Women's Language
 social organization of an animal community is biologically determined
(and thus specific for each species), but in human communities it is
culturally determined (in one and the same species of Homo sapiens
sapiens one may find monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, exogamy, endogamy,

Item #9782 (3 Nov 1997 13:36) - 8.1577, TOC: New Journal: Evolution of Communication
 of communication in general. The journal therefore accomodates studies
on various species as well as comparative, theoretical, and
experimental studies. This truly multidisciplinary approach will

Item #9854 (17 Nov 1997 15:38) - 8.1649, Calls: ORAGE'98, Human Cognition
 - Human ethology
- Animal and cross-species communication
- Gesturing (hearing and deaf subjects, sign language...)

Item #9942 (4 Dec 1997 10:55) - 8.1737, Calls: German Ling., Computation/Metaphors/Analogy
 * issues of grounding of analogies
* cross-cultural, cross-technology, cross-species understanding of
metaphors

Item #10018 (21 Dec 1997 11:48) - 8.1813, Disc: Prescriptivism
 to condemn prescriptivists!), and seems to run head-on into the
problem that a species which is almost wholly dependent on learning
rather than instinct (unless Chomsky is right after all) would seem to