h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> For example it seems useless to communicate that a food source for a family group has been located without being able to communicate both how far away it is and in what quantity (enough or not enough) and both need numbers, however approximate. <<

Can I just throw honey bees' waggle-dance in here to confuse things?

RF

OOoh, numbers coming up on the inside...

I'm going for words. People are quite egocentric so the first concepts we would have needed to express would have been about ourselves; tired, hungry, scared, etc. It's only as a social grouping begins to establish and become important that numbers would become a big concept.

"Similarly, if a pack of wolves was on the prowl it would be useful to know if there were just the two wolves or 50 - an important difference to a tribe of 20 individuals in terms of fight or flight. "

I'm sure there was some sort of experiment done with dogs a few years ago that 'proved' they can count. Something to do with recognising another group of dogs had more or less members than their own, and recognising which pile of dog biscuits (or something) had more items, even when they were piled up diferently.

There is also that painting of dogs playing poker. They couldn´t do that if they didn´t know how to count, how would they know who had the better cards?

then there is the Craig Charles theory of early humans counting - one, two, many, sh!tloads. Where many is more than 2 but dealable-with whereas sh!tloads means more than we cand deal with.

(I am aware he may well not be the originator of this particular idea)

The Christians / Creationists among you can easily answer this:

"In the beginning was the word..."

See, problem solved.



And the word was:

Aardvark - lexicographic joke from my youth.
Bang - as the cosmologists would argue.
One - just to confuse this thread.

F

3 guesses - In the beginning was the word, and the word was -

a) Run!
b) Mine!
c) Hellllo...

So at what point does a variety of grunts count as words, and a general grasp of few or many become numbers. If the grey areas are substantial, which comes first may be meaningless.

Noggin

That's what I meant in Post 10. It was sort of answered by Chris in Post 17, but we still need a clear definition.

You need (a) clear definition(s) to answer the question, but my point here was rather that there is *no* clear definition/boundary as you progress from communicative grunt/facial expression/scent emission to words to language, or from few/many to small number monitoring to arithmetical system.

Noggin

Just been covering language, learning and meaning in my biological psychology course. It too mentions the vervet monekys' eagle/snake/leopard calls.
Each of these is composed of 3 repeated sounds. The difference is in the duration of the individual sounds that make up the call. Can't remember it all right now - something to do with formants. Anyway, there must be an implicit understanding of numbers since 3 sounds make up the calls. So at some level the monkey brain must be able to go '1,2,3 - Snake!' and leg it.

It also made the point that the vervet monkey calls are not the same as our language. As far as we can tell giving the sounds for snake 3 times doesn't mean there are 3 snakes. Or giving the sound for snake then eagle doesn't mean that there is an eagle chasing a snake.

The vervet calls are not contextual and have no grammar.

Can I throw this in?

What about sign language instead of words? Where does that fit in?

In the grey area next to me I reckon

Key thing about language, as opposed to grunts etc, is that it has context and grammar. Sign language has both of these, and AFIK is processed in the language areas of the brain.

Noggin

In sign language I assume that the signs represent words but initially wouldn't gestures have come before the words?

as I understand it the signs represent concepts that we have words for - you could say words represent the signs!

Would gestures have come before? Interesting thought. I'd kinda think they may have their origins at around the same time. 'point and grunt' as it were. Sign language is a proper language in its own right, it has its own structure - well, several actually since there are different sign languages and they are different.

What was that tribe that was on QI that had a language which was mostly sign language and little spoken component?

Italians?

az

If you study the linguistics of a signed language you'll find that it contains much gesture. In fact, some linguists argue that a signed language is not equivalent to a spoken language. Rather, it is equivalent to spoken language plus gesture. The distinction between the 'linguistic' part and the 'gesture' part is vague and hard to define, but there are real differences. 'You know it when you see it.'

I've also heard the argument that signed languages predate spoken ones.

TRiG.