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If we meet an extraterrestrial who keeps shouting "gavagai!", how are we to decode its meaning? Do bees and dolphins possess a linguistic competence? Did the chimpanzees Sara, Washoe,and Nim acquire a human-like language? In this book, Premack examines our human fascination with using language as a tool to our understanding of ourselves. He clearly and wittily untangles the complex skein of arguments, put forth since Darwin's time, over whether we are unique because we can talk. Gavagai! examines the arguments of the biologists interested in the evolutionary significance of "talking" chimpanzees, the problems confronted by linguists trying to determine what language is,and the theories entertained by psycholinguists and philosophers.Communication is a poor way to characterize what is unique in humans, Premack argues, and language alone an even poorer measure of our uniqueness. Taking us into the animal lab, he introduces us to the trials and tribulations of Sara, Peony, Elizabeth, Washoe, and Nim as they learn "language" and explores the kind of learning that has taken place. Can a chimpanzee think with the language? Can we produce an emotional reaction in chimpanzees through the use of words alone? Can they refrain from the use of emotional physical actions, using language alone to express anger, affection, jealousy? Gavagai! concludes that we would do well to rid ourselves of our infatuation with language as the sole human specialization.
Pedagogy, social attribution, and consciousness are unique forces that link one human to another. It is advanced intelligence coupled with a special factor which permits language to emerge. A human,Premack observes, is not simply a chimpanzee to which language has been added.
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Caleb Vasek
reviewed Gavagai!: or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy on January 09, 2021 Gavagai!
Katherine F. Grier's Pets in America is a fascinating account of how our patterns of behaviour have changed over three centuries with regard to the species we live with and the reasons we do so.
In the 1700s and 1800s, Americans shared their homes and properties, as well as the city streets where they lived, with a greater number of species (e.g., cats, dogs, cows, chickens, pigs, horses) than we do today even though 'more than 60 percent of American households contained pet animals.' (p. 315)
In this country's short history, the numbers of animals, companions or otherwise, that it has consumed is beyond comprehension. For example, Grier notes that the number of canaries imported into the U.S. was 'more than 20,000 in the decade before 1853, 10,000 in 1853 alone, and 20,000 each year by 1867.' (p. 241)
America's pets is big business, which Grier charts with great detail over the centuries. Surprisingly, today, she states that as a 'percentage of the entire American economy, with a $10.4 trillion gross domestic product in 2002, the pet industry is small [$34.4 billion].' (p. 316)
Nonetheless, all these millions of animals who were seen to be a 'fancy' ' an earlier term for a pet or companion animal, they are all individual animals each one with a unique personality. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects to Grier's book is how she charts the transition from the anonymity, if you will, of the chickens and pigs who people used to live alongside with to the emergence of a 'biography' and identity for those animals who became people's pets. She quotes many fascinating accounts written over the years about how people described their relationship with the animals they lived with.
In the course of this history, Grier refers to the emergence of humane attitudes, including in fiction (e.g., Black Beauty by Anna Sewell) and education, and the origins of animal control and the animal protection movement, including the ASPCA. There is also an important narrative on the development of the pet food and supplies industry.
This is an important book for animal advocates and animal scholars to read. It makes an major contribution to our understanding of how and why our relationship with those animals who we designate as 'pets' is a mess -- even though for many of us they are the loves of our lives.
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Add Gavagai!: or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy, If we meet an extraterrestrial who keeps shouting gavagai!, how are we to decode its meaning? Do bees and dolphins possess a linguistic competence? Did the chimpanzees Sara, Washoe,and Nim acquire a human-like language? In this book, Premack examines ou, Gavagai!: or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add Gavagai!: or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy, If we meet an extraterrestrial who keeps shouting gavagai!, how are we to decode its meaning? Do bees and dolphins possess a linguistic competence? Did the chimpanzees Sara, Washoe,and Nim acquire a human-like language? In this book, Premack examines ou, Gavagai!: or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy to your collection on WonderClub |