If Dogs Could Talk...
...I'm sure you'd hear a lot of things that'd make you cry, my dear.
Read this Geoffrey Pullum Language Log post about the recent reports that dogs can understand language. Of course, it's a case of a researcher using sloppy language and an incedulous press. Pullum's rant, though, is lots of fun.
The trained object-fetching behavior of
Rico, the border collie that this German research is talking about, has
nothing at all to do with understanding language. The behavior is
comparable to what you would have shown if you demonstrated that you
had trained your goldfish to swim to a given object in its tank when
you showed it a card with a given letter of the Greek alphabet. By all
means attempt that too, if you think it would be interesting science.
But don't bring it to me for my approval under a headline saying
Research Shows Goldfish Can Read Greek, that's all! Unless you actually
enjoy seeing the veins standing out in my neck as I hurl some more
defenseless chairs and coffee tables and goldfish tanks around the room.
9:48:01 AM Permalink
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See-thru. 
