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by upvotinglurker
2925 days ago
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This is the first time I've heard of the Sentinelese, but based on the Wikipedia articles[0], they have been observed using enough words, grammar, etc. for linguists to make hypotheses about how it is (or is not) related to and inter-intelligible with the languages of nearby ethnic groups. If "the Sentinelese have been observed using sounds and patterns of sounds in ways that match what we have always known/referred to as language, therefore they have language" is not an acceptable statement, then it's hard to see how any statement on the subject can be made at all (including the statement "Koko has language"). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language, as well as the one you linked directly to |
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In the very first paragraph of the Wikipedia page you linked, you will see this --
"Due to the lack of contact between the Sentinelese people and the rest of the world for the past three centuries, nothing is known of their language" -- from your [0]
Everything about their language is a presumption/guess: "These people are geographically close to these other tribes we know, therefore its very likely they have a similar language." Nothing wrong with that line of reasoning, except that it has very limited scope.
My purpose of introducing the Sentinelese to the discussion was precisely to show that our judgement of whether someone or something has a language is strongly biased. Case in point the Sentinelese. No one for a second will doubt that they have a language but there is no direct verification, only extrapolation.
"It is presumed that the islanders speak a single language and that it is a member of one of the Andamanese language families.[4] Based on what little is known about similarities in culture and technology and their geographical proximity, it is supposed that their language is related to the Ongan languages, such as Jarawa, rather than to Great Andamanese.[6] On the two documented occasions when Onge-speaking individuals were taken to North Sentinel Island in order to attempt communication, they were unable to recognise any of the language spoken by the inhabitants in the brief and hostile exchanges that resulted." -- from your [0]
Our mechanisms for language detection are too limited in scope to be applied widely. Forget cross species inference even within humans it runs into difficulties -- case in point Indus valley script.
Consider a non-native English speaker barely skilled in English. Her English will very likely not adhere to English grammar and may not have the expected recursive structure. Consider the language with which we interact with Google search, most of the time they don't have recursive structure. It would be presumptuous of an observer (say from another planet) to deem that the one interacting with Google does not have language because there is no rich/recursive linguistic structure.