Today's Catwoman wears a purple costume
Mike Ward
Newmar, Michelle Pfriffer, and drawing of Catwoman in her pruple catsuit.
The last contains the caption, "Today's comic book version wears a purple
catsuit."
Makes me wonder if the stories about things I no nothing about are any more
accurate.
Mike
Nathan Sanders
<DveMc.311147$Gx4....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
Mike Ward <m@d.w> wrote:
Probably not. As a linguist, I cringe any time I even see a news
headline about language...
...and end up cringing even more while reading the article.
Nathan
a dog's Pavolvian response to speech is not "understanding langauge"
--
To contact me, replace verizon.net with aol.com
Jeremy Henderson
<nathan...@verizon.net> wrote:
>In article
><DveMc.311147$Gx4....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> Mike Ward <m@d.w> wrote:
>
>> Today's paper has an article on Catwoman. There are pictures of Julie
>> Newmar, Michelle Pfriffer, and drawing of Catwoman in her pruple catsuit.
>> The last contains the caption, "Today's comic book version wears a purple
>> catsuit."
>>
>> Makes me wonder if the stories about things I no nothing about are any more
>> accurate.
>
>Probably not. As a linguist, I cringe any time I even see a news
>headline about language...
>
>...and end up cringing even more while reading the article.
I don't think I've ever read a newspaper story about comics that
didn't get at least one fact wrong. I think the worst was the story
about Millar's Authority that ran in a British that had 13 errors,
including the spelling of "Mark Miller's" name.
______________________________________________
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Come visit the least interesting blog ever!
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Mike Ward
news:f3d3g0lkc3kqp7354...@4ax.com:
> On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:39:38 GMT, Nathan Sanders
> <nathan...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>In article
>><DveMc.311147$Gx4....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
>> Mike Ward <m@d.w> wrote:
>>
>>> Today's paper has an article on Catwoman. There are pictures of
>>> Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfriffer, and drawing of Catwoman in her
>>> pruple catsuit. The last contains the caption, "Today's comic book
>>> version wears a purple catsuit."
>>>
>>> Makes me wonder if the stories about things I no nothing about are
>>> any more accurate.
>>
>>Probably not. As a linguist, I cringe any time I even see a news
>>headline about language...
>>
>>...and end up cringing even more while reading the article.
>
> I don't think I've ever read a newspaper story about comics that
> didn't get at least one fact wrong. I think the worst was the story
> about Millar's Authority that ran in a British that had 13 errors,
> including the spelling of "Mark Miller's" name.
One of the Chicago papers ran a story recently about Spider-Man that had
three errors in one sentence.
Mike
Bern
DveMc.311147$Gx4....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
I work for a press agency and I can tell you those mistakes happen all the
time. How many times have you read an article saying Napster was «a web site
where internet users can download songs»? (Well, it is now, but it was not
at the time.)
Journalists, just like other people, assume things all the time. It's
usually small mistakes that don't have much impact on the whole story,
though. But still.
Mike Ward
news:DBiMc.55173$732.1...@weber.videotron.net:
I think the biggest impact is on credibility. How do you know what you can
trust?
One of the best points I have heard was how if a newpaper reports something
incorretly it becomes a primary historical source. Someone disputing the
account even someone who was there is given less credibility than what the
paper says because the witnesses claim is undocumented but the newspaper
report is by definition documented.
Mike
Mike
Mike Ward
news:wFiMc.128679$OB3...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:
And I might add that one of the "positive" reviews was "If you like 'Van
Helsing' and 'The Punisher,' then you'll enjoy this."
Mike
Mike Ward
news.ops.worldnet.att.net:
Oops followed up the wrong post.
Mike
Bern
news: f3d3g0lkc3kqp7354...@4ax.com...
> I don't think I've ever read a newspaper story about comics that
> didn't get at least one fact wrong.
It's probably true of most stories on a topic you know about. If some
journalists are having trouble reporting stories about comics, can you
imagine how it is when they report science related ones?
To their defense, they mostly report what they're told. If their sources
tells them something that isn't completely accurate, what can they do?
GG
> a dog's Pavolvian response to speech is not "understanding langauge"
You don't have a dog, do you?
--
Grant Giandonato
Check out my eBay auctions:
http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/ggiandonato/
BlackJet76
usually small mistakes that don't have much impact on the whole story,
Yes why can't more people be perfect and get every tiny thing right?
The Babaloughesian
"BlackJet76" <black...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040724003045...@mb-m17.aol.com...
They're not motivated enough. Dangle them over the side of a roof twenty
stories high, then they'll be singing a different tune.*
--
*a lot like a little potato man dancing a jig on your ceiling when you go to
bed at night
Michael Pastor
> Nathan Sanders" <nathan...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> a dog's Pavolvian response to speech is not "understanding langauge"
>
> You don't have a dog, do you?
From NPR: a dog with a 200 word vocabulary:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1952976
michael j pastor
stace
"Mike Ward" <m@d.w> wrote in message
news:2MiMc.128703$OB3....@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
OOOH! Such a ringing endorsement....cripes.
Nathan Sanders
"Michael Pastor" <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Ugh, yes, this is precisely the kind of tripe I was referring to.
When dogs (or signing apes or dolphins or whatever the wonder animal
of the month is) can respond to commands like "fetch the ball that was
on the floor but is now on the table, rather than the ball that was
and still is on the floor", then linguists will be impressed.
But until animals can "talk" about and/or respond to complex
relationships between objects, differences in time, and abstract
concepts, they aren't using "language".
The idea that a unstructured set of words constitues a "language" (in
the sense of what humans use to communicate) is what leads to other
ridiculous statements about language like "Eskimos have 100 words for
snow".
Nathan
Michael Pastor
That's a very speciesist point of view of language, for one. Two, the dog
article doesn't attempt to claim that the unstructured set of words was a
language, only a vocabulary.
michael j pastor
GG
news:nathansanders-9CD...@news.verizon.net...
Eskimos are animals? I don't get it?
--
Grant Giandonato
Nathan Sanders
"Michael Pastor" <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > The idea that a unstructured set of words constitues a "language" (in
> > the sense of what humans use to communicate) is what leads to other
> > ridiculous statements about language like "Eskimos have 100 words for
> > snow".
>
> That's a very speciesist point of view of language, for one. Two, the dog
No other animal has shown anything close to the capcity for language
that humans have. No known animal communication expresses hopes or
other abstract embedding of simpler ideas (thoughts, dreams, wishes,
beliefs, reports); contrast among past, present, and future; complex
relationships, even between concrete entities ("Al saw Carol's dress
on Bob"); etc.
> article doesn't attempt to claim that the unstructured set of words was a
> language, only a vocabulary.
Quotes from the article:
"New research shows that some dogs have a remarkable capacity to
comprehend human speech."
There's a *huge* difference between associating a particular sound
with a partcular object and "comprehending" speech. They have not
shown that Rico "comprehends" speech, anymore than Pavlov showed that
dogs "comprehend" bells.
"[T]he dog's on the border of very complex language ability."
Rico can associate sounds with objects and memorize that association,
and suddenly his language ability is *this close* to "very complex"?
If a vocabulary of a few hundred words is "on the border of very
complex language ability", then I can't imagine how this writer feels
about a typical English speaker, with a vocabulary 100 times larger,
combined with the abilities to abstractly embed, to contrast different
tenses, or to express complex relationships.
No one (seriously) claims that birds or whales "comprehend (human)
music", despite having rather extraordinary singing behavior. Why do
people so readily believe that dogs and chimps "comprehend (human)
speech", when their linguistic ability is no more impressive than the
musical ability of birds and whales?
Nathan Sanders
"GG" <g...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > But until animals can "talk" about and/or respond to complex
> > relationships between objects, differences in time, and abstract
> > concepts, they aren't using "language".
>
> You don't have a dog, do you?
I do (well, my landlady does). She doesn't "use" language, or
"comprehend" it. She (sometimes, but not consistently) responds in a
predictable way to specific, limited, previously memeorized speech
sounds. She certainly does not reliably respond correctly (if at all)
to utterances with constructions novel to her, like "fetch the ball
that Jill didn't throw" or "where's the big black stuffed animal you
like to hump?" or "sit, if you pooped today".
Since all human languages can express such utterances, and since human
children master the ability to respond to and produce them
consistently by the age of 5, and since no animal ever has shown
anything close to the same ability, I think I and pretty much all
other professional linguists are on firm ground when we say that
animals do not (currently) have a language capcity even approximating
a minimal working definition of human language.
Maybe in a few million years.
> > The idea that a unstructured set of words constitues a "language" (in
> > the sense of what humans use to communicate) is what leads to other
> > ridiculous statements about language like "Eskimos have 100 words for
> > snow".
>
> Eskimos are animals? I don't get it?
Eskimos don't have 100 words for snow. It's an urban legend. The
reason this legend persists is because laymen are stuck on the idea
that a set of words is sufficient to define a language (when language
is in fact far far more complex, with vocabulary being one of the
simplest components).
This same idea leads people to incorrectly proclaim that chimps,
parrots, and dogs and otehr animals "comprehend" human language, when
all they do is respond predictably to pre-arranged stimuli. One huge
difference between humans and animals is that humans go well beyond
pre-arranged stimuli and can respond to novel stimuli. Despite never
having heard/read any of the sentences I;ve posted heere before, you
know what they mean.
(Interestingly, when you take the trainers out of the picture as
convenient interpreters, the animals' abilities vastly decrease. For
example, users of American Sign Language find Koko's signing
incomprehenisble babbling stream of nearly random words, with "banana"
and "hungry" thrown in only slightly more often than "pretty" and
"flower". Joel Wallman's _Aping Language_ is an invaluable resource
on this topic.)
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program nsan...@wso.williams.edu
Williams College http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders
Williamstown, MA 01267
GG
"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders...@wso.williams.edu> wrote in message
news:nsanders.DIE.SPAM-0...@news.verizon.net...
> In article <sZednd-YbuT...@comcast.com>,
> "GG" <g...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > > But until animals can "talk" about and/or respond to complex
> > > relationships between objects, differences in time, and abstract
> > > concepts, they aren't using "language".
> >
> > You don't have a dog, do you?
>
> I do (well, my landlady does). She doesn't "use" language, or
> "comprehend" it. She (sometimes, but not consistently) responds in a
> predictable way to specific, limited, previously memeorized speech
> sounds. She certainly does not reliably respond correctly (if at all)
> to utterances with constructions novel to her, like "fetch the ball
> that Jill didn't throw" or "where's the big black stuffed animal you
> like to hump?" or "sit, if you pooped today".
Well, dogs aren't all that smart, but they do understand some basic
language. Sit, stay, etc. They are trained, but like we train our children
at that age. (My neice is just over a year old and so is my dog... for a
while there they were on the same wavelength.) It was funny to say "Do you
want some din-din?" and see both of them get all excited for dinner.
Oddly enough, my dog will come up to my office and press her nose against my
leg when she has to go outside. I didn't teach her to do this... she just
started doing it the other day. No, since she's not talking to me it isn't
langauge, but it is a form of communication. I think that's were people get
mixed up (myself included.) Dogs and other animals can communicate with
people... it just isn't in the normal language we use to communicate with
each other.
--
Grant Giandonato
Mike Ward
> In article <2n2gnqF...@uni-berlin.de>,
> "Michael Pastor" <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > The idea that a unstructured set of words constitues a "language"
>> > (in the sense of what humans use to communicate) is what leads to
>> > other ridiculous statements about language like "Eskimos have 100
>> > words for snow".
>>
>> That's a very speciesist point of view of language, for one. Two,
>> the dog
No, he's just using the word "language" correctly. If you think it's
speciesist that the word language does not encompass the limited
communication of dogs then your nuttier than I thought.
Nathan Sanders
"GG" <g...@comcast.net> wrote:
> langauge, but it is a form of communication. I think that's were people get
> mixed up (myself included.) Dogs and other animals can communicate with
> people... it just isn't in the normal language we use to communicate with
> each other.
Oh, absolutely they can particpate in commmunication, no denying that.
But animal-level communication is limited to concrete concepts and
entities engaged in simple and current relationships with each other.
Anything beyond that is just completely out of their league, and human
language is well beyond that limited type of communication. We can
express counterfactuals and conditionals, talk about the past, ask
questions, employ sarcasm, discuss entities we have never seen (or
that might not even exist), etc.
GG
If, by some scientific breakthrough, dogs could talk, I wonder what they
would say?
"What a beautiful sunset." "Give me cookie." "Tonight, I'm going to kill
you while you sleep." :-)
CleV
There's a great episode of Johnny Bravo with a "realistic" talking dog
... :-))))
Mike Ward
news:410d1e6f...@news.hispeed.ch:
There was a great Dexter's Lab were Dexter's gives a dog the ability to
talk and all it says are things like "Hey, I'm a dog" and "I can hear you".
Mike
CleV
Or did I mean Dexter's? The one where the dog's owner turns up at the
end and looks a lot like him, with much the same mannerisms and
behavioural tics?
Mike Ward
news:410d29a4...@news.hispeed.ch:
Yeah that's it. It was a Dexter's.
Mike
arnold kim
"Mike Ward" <m@d.w> wrote in message
Or when he's barking at one of Dexter's inventions.
"Look, here! It's a thing! I-I found a thing! A thing! Here! It's a
thing! I found a thing!"
Arnold Kim
Daibhid Ceannaideach
Date: 01/08/04 05:27 GMT Daylight Time
You're probably right, but I can't help speculating.
When I say "Dinner, Schroedy" to my cat, that's a simple communication he
associates with a direct concept. If I were to say "Would you prefer the
chicken or the tuna tonight?" he'd be lost.
On the other hand, when Schro stands by the cat-food cupboard and yowls, that's
a simple communication *I* associate with a direct concept. When he stands in
the middle of the living room and makes a weird clicking noise, *I*'m lost.
It's theoretically possible that Schroedinger could be expressing abstract
concepts, and I'm just as incapable of understanding them as I would be if he
was French. (In fact my fluency in French is probably slightly *below* my
fluency in Cat.)
Like I said, your probably right, I'm just a bit suspicious of the idea that,
if we and other animals exist in mutual incomprehension, it's obviously because
*they're* not up to it...
--
Dave
The Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
Egret: An apology sent by computer.
-Andy Hamilton, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
Jesse F. Hughes
> In article <2mesrrF...@uni-berlin.de>,
> "Michael Pastor" <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> GG wrote:
>> > Nathan Sanders" <nathan...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >> a dog's Pavolvian response to speech is not "understanding langauge"
>> >
>> > You don't have a dog, do you?
>>
>> From NPR: a dog with a 200 word vocabulary:
>>
>> http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1952976
>
> Ugh, yes, this is precisely the kind of tripe I was referring to.
I don't now if that dog has a language or not, but recognizing 200
words is impressive nonetheless. Certainly worthy of a small news
story.
(Tripe? Dog story? Was this supposed to be a
rec.games.roguelike.nethack post?)
--
Jesse F. Hughes
"I want to really eat myself, so then I'll be a coalgebra."
-- Quincy P. Hughes, Age 3 1/2