RE: Hypothical language amongst the more brainier dinosaurs

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

  One can make a case that the traces left by the dancing are themselves a 
component of the dancing itself. If the dancing is language, and not itself 
some transcription, then the traces left by it as a result of, rather than an 
alternate form of, this communication _becomes_ language. 

Cheers,

  Jaime A. Headden
  The Bite Stuff (site v2)
  http://qilong.wordpress.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion 
Backs)


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> Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:30:18 +0200
> From: david.marjanovic@gmx.at
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Hypothical language amongst the more brainier dinosaurs
>
> > Dinotopian dinosaurs used a simple replacement of Footprints
> > [creating letters and punctuation] in place of the human English
> > alphabet. The requirements to 'write' is complex 'dancing-like'
> > moves. I would think that simple hand slashing or foot
> > scratching/raking would produce enough simple symbols that could
> > convey a lot of different words or ideas. I do not see the
> > development of sentence syntax or words, but multiple symbols could
> > produce compound words, or more complex ideas.
>
> Are you trying to say that the "dancing" _is_ the language? Or are you
> hitting a pet peeve of mine by confusing a language (the thing that
> _has_ a syntax, words, and the like) with its writing system, as most
> people who talk about language do most of the time?