In a message dated 6/9/2015 7:51:47 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
""Wenn ein Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen.""
"[S]urely if we can understand 'what is spoken' then we can understand 'what
is
spoken' no matter who the speaker is? Why would what 'what is spoken' be
understandable if said by a fellow human but not understandable if said by a
lion?"
It may not be depth-grammar, as Witters pretentiously puts it, but he said
'ihn' -- i.e. understand *the lion*, _not_ understand what the lion is
talking about. A world of difference!* For Strawson!
In "Intention and convention in speech acts", Strawson provides an analysis
of 'understand'. Addressee A understands that U means that p, by uttering
x iff
(i) A comes to recognise U's intention behind x.
(ii) A comes to recognise the role that such a recognition plays in (i)
(iii) A comes to recognise that everything is 'above board' and that there
are no covert intentions regarding x in U's uttering of x which are
constitutive of the 'signification' involved.
(yes, all pretty Strawsonian lingo).
McEvoy: "A lion in the wild roaring "Take a photo" might render us merely
astonished - we would not, without much more ado, be able to understand this
"Take a photo" as language. We would (in this sense) not be able to
understand its sense."
Perhaps Witters should have read Darwin, "The expression of emotions in man
and animals", and perhaps he should have complained that he meant
'sprechen', not 'talk'! And perhaps he should have allowed for forms of life
not to
be so isolated!
When resting, lion socialization occurs through a number of behaviours, and
the animal's expressive movements are highly developed. Still Witters
never made an attempt to understand the one and only lion he once saw in the
Vienna Zoological Gardens.
The lion's most common peaceful tactile gestures are head rubbing and
social licking, which have been compared with grooming in primates.
Head rubbing – nuzzling one's forehead, face and neck against another lion
– appears to be a form of greeting (as if the lion were to say "Hello!", or
in a more American way, "Hi!"), as it is seen often after an animal has
been apart from others -- or after a fight or confrontation.
Male lions tend to rub other males, while cubs and females rub females.
Social licking often occurs in tandem with head rubbing.
Licking is generally mutual and the recipient appears to express pleasure.
The lion's head and neck are the most common parts of the body licked,
which may have arisen out of utility, as a lion cannot lick these areas
individually (and it is a good thing Witters never tried).
On top, lions have an array of FACIAL expressions and body postures that
serve as visual gestures -- if not 'signs' in Peirce's usage of this term.
The lion's repertoire of vocalisations is also pretty large.
Variations in intensity and pitch, rather than discrete signals, appear
central to communication. (On the other hand, Witter's German was more
discreet, apparently, and he (in a majestic plural 'we' postulated that 'we'
could
not understand a lion).
Lion sounds include snarling, hissing, coughing, miaowing, woofing, and not
just roaring.
Lions tend to roar in a very characteristic manner, starting with a few
deep, long roars that trail off into a series of shorter ones.
(While the average German lexical item is pretty long -- and that's why
Scrabble is not a game popular with Germans).
Lions most often roar at night.
The sound, which can be heard from a distance of 8 kilometres (5.0 mi), is
used to advertise the animal's presence -- this is what the lion MEANS, and
this is what another lion UNDERSTANDS the roaring lion to be meaning.
Lions have the loudest roar of any big cat, and I would not be surprised if
Witters did not heard the roar from his house in Vienna which was close
enough to the Zoological Garden.
And then there's the lion's tale, for, for the record, the English
translation of Witters's anthropomorphic 'sprechen' is 'talk', which is less
so.
"Talk" is cognate with 'tell', Old English talu, a noun meaning a
"calculation", but also a deposition, from Proto-Germanic "talo", cognate with
German
Erzaehlung, from an Aryan root "del-", 'to recount' -- cf. German 'zahl',
number. It can also apply to things divulged that were given secretly.'
Cheers,
Speranza
References
Schaller, George B. The Serengeti lion: A study of predator-prey relations.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sparks, J. "Allogrooming in primates:a review". In Desmond Morris. Primate
Ethology. Chicago: Aldine.
Leyhausen, Paul. Verhaltensstudien an Katzen (in German) (2nd ed.).
Berlin: Paul Parey.
Ananthakrishnan, G.; Eklund, Robert; Peters, Gustav; Mabiza, Evans. "An
acoustic analysis of lion roars. II: Vocal tract characteristics" Speech,
Music and Hearing Quarterly Progress and Status Report TMH-QPSR 51.
Eklund, Robert; Peters, Gustav;; Ananthakrishnan, G; Mabiza, Evans. "An
acoustic analysis of lion roars. I: Data collection and spectrogram and
waveform analyses". Speech, Music and Hearing Quarterly Progress and Status
Report TMH-QPSR 51.
N�!jx ʋ�.+Hu欱�m�x,���r��{�����iƭ����� }ؠz�h�� ~����0��ݭ��r��}���؝y�!�i
