May 14, 2010
prairie dog language
Just skip the religious drek and focus on section 2 (via):
Then another amazing language characteristic emerged: the ability to add modifiers to a basic noun category. The prairie dogs have different words for attributes such as color, size, and speed of travel. There were different words for different kinds of dogs, for a man with a yellow coat, and even for a man with a yellow coat with a gun. When the man with the yellow coat and gun came out the next day without the gun, he was still given the same bark from the day before when he had a gun. The memory of the name for one specific person was retained for a period of two months.
The research has shown at least 20 different basic prairie dog words describing predators, with many more variations to account for modifiers, totaling about 100 words. That does not mean their vocabulary is limited to that number of words, but rather it indicates the current state of our knowledge. It takes many experiments to verify each new word. The test environment of predators and the resulting sentry bark responses allow the researchers to actually understand the topic of conversation, a subject not easily controlled in scientific experiments. At this time we have no idea what prairie dogs might talk about over breakfast.
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I used to know a speech scientist who did a study on accents detected by same-species birds living in different global areas.
Prairie Dog Novel: Yellow man food! Yellow man food! Yellow gun man food! Yellow gun man Sounds! Where’s Jimmy!