3 Prairie Dog Language Researcher Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona Universi

Question

3 Prairie Dog Language Researcher Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University has studied prairie dogs for more than twenty years and concluded that their communication system has many of the same features as human language. According to Slobodchikoff (1998), prairie dogs have different barks ("nouns") for different predators, and they combine these "words" with other sounds, or "modifiers," that indicate size, color, and other features. He also claims t barks to new objects or animals in their environment. Prairie dogs, he argues, have words for coy- otes, skunks, and badgers, as well as for such nonpredators as deer, elk, and cows, and even for "the man with the yellow Hockett's design features prairie dogs seem to possess and which they don't. hat prairie dogs coin new "words" by assigning new coat." Investigate Slobodchikoff's work on prairie dogs and determine which of

Explanation / Answer

Con Slobodchikoff and I approached the mountain meadow slowly, obliquely, softening our footfalls and conversing in whispers. It didn’t make much difference. Once we were within 50 feet of the clearing’s edge, the alarm sounded: short, shrill notes in rapid sequence, like rounds of sonic bullets.

Like “life” and “consciousness,” “language” is one of those words whose frequent and casual use papers over an epistemological chasm: No one really knows what language is or how it originated. At the center of this conundrum is a much-pondered question about the relationship between language and cognition more generally. Namely, did the mind create language or did language create the mind? Throughout history, philosophers, linguists and scientists have argued eloquently for each possibility. Some have contended that thought and conscious experience necessarily predate language and that language evolved later, as a way to share thoughts. Others have declared that language is the very marrow of consciousness, that the latter requires the former as a foundation.

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