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So what IS with those dolphins, anyway?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Cartman: [QB] The definition itself applies better to formal languages than to natural ones, but if you just had seperate "words" for everything, then you wouldn't have a language, but instead an unexpressive and structureless set of (at best) very weakly related symbols, whereas the semantics of words in (sentences of) an actual language are arbitrary (ie. different meanings are mapped onto different concepts by different groups of speakers in different contexts) and much more delineated through the language's syntax. You also couldn't gesture to every object in your set (since, as you say, a lot of them would be abstract), so someone who didn't know each and every word in your set in terms of, say, English would have no real way of understanding you (as there would basically be ambiguities everywhere). (Dolphins are apparently stuck at that level absent of a demonstrated grammar in their communication [sophisticated as it may be], with pre-arranged sonic patterns denoting concepts in their habitat, but their brain characteristics certainly don't seem to rule out the capacity to develop a language [even if we don't know what exactly is required for it beyond a high brain mass/body mass ratio].) [/QB][/QUOTE]
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