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Vyacheslav Ryabov claims to have recorded a conversation between two dolphins demonstrating the use of "words" and "sentences":
A conversation between dolphins may have been recorded by scientists for the first time, a Russian researcher claims. Two adult Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, named Yasha and Yana, didn't interrupt each other during an interaction taped by scientists and may have formed words and sentences with a series of pulses, Vyacheslav Ryabov says in a new paper. "Essentially, this exchange resembles a conversation between two people," Ryabov said.
[...] Using new recording techniques, Ryabov separated the individual "non coherent pulses" the two dolphins made and theorized each pulse was a word in the dolphins' language, while a collection of pulses is a sentence. "As this language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins," he said in the paper, which was published in the St. Petersburg Polytechnical University Journal: Physics and Mathematics last month. "Their language can be ostensibly considered a high developed spoken language."
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In his paper, Ryabov calls for humans to create a device by which human beings can communicate with dolphins. "Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of ... communications between dolphins and people," he said.
The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.spjpm.2016.08.004) (DX)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @07:16PM
What they actually found was that the dolphins appear to have the equivalent of phonemes and probably words, and the statistical distribution of them indicates the presence of intelligence and possibly language because there are common and rare sounds, distributed similarly to human language. Interestingly the phonemes don't seem to work the same way human ones do, but instead are more like musical chords. They also showed that new words can likely be constructed, and probably learned. They also showed that the "language" has the capability for some degree of abstraction.
What they did not show is the presence of any grammar or, in my (non expert) opinion, enough evidence of abstraction, to conclude that the dolphins have a true language. But those might still be true depending on further study.
I think if dolphins do have language it will be possible to learn it. While it has been said that if they do have language they don't seem to be interested in teaching it to us, they may simply not know how, or even that we would be interested in learning it. Since their phonemes don't work the same way ours do, and the frequencies used are so different, we probably won't be able to even start until we have a translator for our respective sounds.
As it pertains to communication with hypothetical aliens, I think this shows that it will be much easier to communicate with a technological civilization rather than simply an intelligent one. At least a technological civilization will have mathematical concepts that will be shared and likely a form of writing. An intelligent but non-technological species may communicate in ways that simply evade our notice for long periods.
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Tuesday September 13 2016, @07:47PM
I've soiled myself... how embarrasing. [youtu.be]
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @08:46PM
Darmok and Jilad at Tinagra!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @09:06PM
Shaka. When the walls fell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:09AM
The river Temarc in winter.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:52AM
SHEEIT!!! My wife and I were JUST watching that very episode (it just finished in Netflix) when I read these!
Coincidence? Darmok on the ocean!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---