This is not a flower, it's really a llama

Friday, July 10, 2009

Marriage and monkeys

I am supposed to be doing work now, but I can't help but write down a few thoughts that are rushing through my mind.

Married life is more wonderful than I could have ever imagined. I don't know how I could have gotten so lucky to marry the man I did - he always puts a big smile on my face, and I feel more happy and content than I ever remember being. He always dazzles me with with his beautiful mind and soul - hopefully, he will always be happy in life.

From National Geographic: an article on monkeys and language: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090708-monkey-grammar.html. Please share your thoughts on it - I'd love to hear them.

It seemed that it was more about monkeys recognizing patterns in human speech, than with monkeys understanding or having the capacity to understand complex grammar. (Apologies if I butcher any linguistic concepts here), it also seems that the monkeys could recognize tokens based on pause given between words.

What would be a good experiment to determine if an animal could understand grammar? Maybe if the words were not random, but had context, and were only used in certain contexts? There was a study of a parrot, Alex, who could understand language to some extent, but they were unsuccessful in teaching him grammar concepts. It's an interesting question. Does a language have to have this kind of complex grammar to be considered and intelligent language? Do all languages have what the article calls complex grammar (verb tenses, word-order, etc.)? Why are pigeon and Creole not considered valid languages? Is this distinction really based on anything logical or scientific? I feel sometimes that it is not... but the article is interesting.

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