If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys? • Hacker News Board

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#211

Post by lupire » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

user070223 wrote: post #165

osamagirl69 wrote: post #9

A very interesting read, which describes how for ~50 years the community was lead astray by a seemingly simple oversight: studying dead animals instead of living ones! >Charles Darwin theorized that monkeys had the vocal anatomy needed for speech, but lacked the necessary neural mechanisms. >This was the most popular hypothesis until 1969 [when] Lieberman studied the vocal anatomy of a monkey corpse and concluded tha…

I'm pretty sure descended larynx is not prequisite for producing vowels. Vowels are merely overtones which occurs because the waves generated in the vocal folds(with a charachtrized fundamental frequency) travel the vocal tract in 3d, which causes destructive interference for most frequencies except those with constructive interference (overtones / formants) When humans move that tongue and lips we basically change t…

"require" is a fuzzy term. If you force your lips and tongue to stay in place, you can get partial intelligible vowel sounds from your larynx, and feel your larynx changing as vowels change.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#212

Post by eyelidlessness » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 4:10 AM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #152

eyelidlessness wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My chihuahua-pit mix has such a range I often describe it as “singing the songs of her people”. Anyway, what qualifies as speech is very subjective and generally anthropomorphic. I understand what my pup is saying almost all of the time, which wouldn’t qualify it as talking by most standards but it’s plain as day to me.

Haha, meanwhile my chihuahua-pit mix only communicates by trembling, booping, performative sneezing, huffing (as opposed to a woof), sometimes grumbling, and yelling at the mailman. Mostly trembles.

My gorl doesn’t get the chihuahua shivers, but she definitely does some big sneezes and huffs. She also does a big performative snorty sigh when she settles into a snuggle. And she has the loudest sing-songy yawns I have ever imagined, sometimes while dismounting the couch with her front paws and letting them slide across the floor before she can bother with even moving her hind paws.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#213

Post by aaronbrethorst » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 4:12 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #212

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, meanwhile my chihuahua-pit mix only communicates by trembling, booping, performative sneezing, huffing (as opposed to a woof), sometimes grumbling, and yelling at the mailman. Mostly trembles.

My gorl doesn’t get the chihuahua shivers, but she definitely does some big sneezes and huffs. She also does a big performative snorty sigh when she settles into a snuggle. And she has the loudest sing-songy yawns I have ever imagined, sometimes while dismounting the couch with her front paws and letting them slide across the floor before she can bother with even moving her hind paws.

Sounds very sweet :)

Here’s a picture of my little beast: https://instagram.com/p/CYuvs6rPLZP/

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#214

Post by r0rshrk » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

dasickis wrote: post #137

We've been building tech to translate dog barks to something meaningful for us to understand. A few things we observed: 1. Dogs are more communicative once they believe you are correctly responsive to their vocalizations 2. Their barks are more differentiated over time and they start to introduce new types of vocalizations or sequences of vocalizations 3. Dogs don't have a structured vocal language as it starts of sl…

Please please write an article on this. There's not information online about canine communication

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#215

Post by cactusplant7374 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

pks016 wrote: post #203

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not language. It's basically mimicking humans. Noam Chomsky on Nim Chimpsky and the Emergence of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a39vcatTCVU Chomsky has a few other interviews where he addresses this.

You are correct. It is speech not language.

But it's almost not communicating as humans do -- something most commenters are implying.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#216

Post by gnramires » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

I've heard as well that some animals, like Gorillas, have a hard time understanding human speech. However, they can communicate in other ways (using simple signs) that make it clear they have some understanding of language (in the sense of concepts like position, individuals, etc.) and context.

To me this suggests either their sound processing is also insufficient to understand human speech, or not their vocal anatomy, I wonder, but their auditory anatomy could be not ideal for understanding human speech.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#217

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 11:32 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #210

robertlagrant wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying that you think in words is saying that the computer from GalaxyQuest thinks in words because every time it does something, it reports what it has just done over the loudspeakers. You're confusing the effect with the cause. This seems a bit silly. I'm not saying that speaking words is what constitutes thought. I'm saying concepts generally need names before we can reason about them.

You're saying that mental instances of words are what constitutes thought. That is incorrect. Mental words are an output of a mental process downstream of thought. > I'm saying concepts generally need names before we can reason about them. This is also false. People adapt to patterns constantly; they rarely bother to name those patterns.

> This is also false. People adapt to patterns constantly; they rarely bother to name those patterns.

I'm trying to maintain an open tone in the face of this, but I might stop soon. To address this particular point: "adapt to patterns" - such as? From context you seem to be saying this is identical to reasoning, but I don't see why that would be.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#218

Post by engineer_22 » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 12:14 AM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #152

eyelidlessness wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My chihuahua-pit mix has such a range I often describe it as “singing the songs of her people”. Anyway, what qualifies as speech is very subjective and generally anthropomorphic. I understand what my pup is saying almost all of the time, which wouldn’t qualify it as talking by most standards but it’s plain as day to me.

Haha, meanwhile my chihuahua-pit mix only communicates by trembling, booping, performative sneezing, huffing (as opposed to a woof), sometimes grumbling, and yelling at the mailman. Mostly trembles.

"Mostly trembles"

LOL

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#219

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 6:02 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #217

thaumasiotes wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that mental instances of words are what constitutes thought. That is incorrect. Mental words are an output of a mental process downstream of thought. > I'm saying concepts generally need names before we can reason about them. This is also false. People adapt to patterns constantly; they rarely bother to name those patterns.

> This is also false. People adapt to patterns constantly; they rarely bother to name those patterns. I'm trying to maintain an open tone in the face of this, but I might stop soon. To address this particular point: "adapt to patterns" - such as? From context you seem to be saying this is identical to reasoning, but I don't see why that would be.

> "adapt to patterns" - such as?

This is difficult to answer in terms other than "everything in the world".

People do not have trouble recognizing different types of pain that they experience and seeking different treatment based on the difference in the pain. They do not use words to represent the differences, and if you ask them to describe those differences, they will become frustrated.

People don't have trouble recognizing smells. They are generally not able to describe smells. This is why you see frustration among chemical engineers over papers describing the smell of various substances as "characteristic".

People routinely recognize behavior without having any name for it. If you choose a strategy for making a presentation to your boss, you are doing this based on a mental model of his behavior. In some cases, people do give names to behavior that they worry about, but in almost all cases, they don't.

I recently described the behavior of dancers in a dance video in these terms: "they're being like him". You may notice that there is zero descriptive content in that sentence. But the meaning was clear to both me and my interlocutors.

Consider a hypothetical conversation planning out a strategy. (For anything.) Person A describes a plan. Person B responds "What if he does that thing he does?". A and B both understand what is being referred to, but, obviously, B has no name for it.

All of these are just examples of a phenomenon that applies to everything. If you've ever observed anyone struggling to put their thoughts into words -- and I know that you have -- you should be able to realize that their thoughts cannot have been embodied in words to begin with.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#220

Post by Timwi » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 11:21 AM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #188

distcs wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this is relevant or even correct. English speakers certainly can pronounce R.

One sort of R, sure. But native English speakers often have trouble with the "voiced alveolar trill" R which is present in many other European languages, unless they speak one of the less common English dialects where it is used.

“have trouble with” is a far cry from “can't”.