Alternative to the laryngeal theory

Maybe I am just being efficient, and not lazy. The two people who were discussing it initially are obviously still around, so why should I bother reading the whole thread?
Have you read the whole thread? Can you summarize me what's it about?

I'd be more than happy to provide a summary.

I am low ranking cabinet member for the Trump administration tasked with finding ways to make American waffles great again. I've funded an expedition led by FalseProphet, who is a crypto archeologist, to recover some artifacts from beyond the ice wall. A number of these artifacts contain writings that are proving difficult to translate so we're training flat assembler, who is a highly customized chatbot, to assist in interpreting them.

Hope that helps.

I doubt you've read the thread. Do you even know what Laryngeal Theory is?

Is this what the world is coming to? Coming to a forum. Pretending not to have read a thread and asking for a summary and then trying to embarrass anyone who is kind enough to respond by pointing out any minor discrepancy? It sounds like rude behavior to me.

Can you summarize me what's it about?

Only the first few posts are about Laryngeal theory.
Then comes stuff about German.
Then Babyhighspeed rants against me.
Then I lose patience with FlatAssembler.
Then it's about Croatian toponyms.
Then we pray to God Almighty in Proto-Indo-European.
Then you came along.

@crutonius: Why do you think I must have read the thread? If you claim for a thread about linguistics that it's a thread about a conspiracy theory, that's an almost unexplainable "discrepancy". You are one being rude, I am trying to discuss linguistics, and you bombard me with conspiracy theories.

@FalseProphet: So, could you please summarize the arguments for and against the Laryngeal Theory?

Don't forget the bit about the penguins. FalseProphet is going to solve their language and steal their cookies.

Gotta crazy moderators here, don't ye?

The penguins are the crazy ones. They will getcha.

Some people may have fun here, but I'd liika read a good text about the Laryngeal Theory as soon as possible.

Don't forget the bit about the penguins. FalseProphet is going to solve their language and steal their cookies.

It's extremely hard. They have the same expression for: "Where is the next research station?" and "Please surround me and pick viciously at my lower parts!"

@crutonius: Why do you think I must have read the thread? If you claim for a thread about linguistics that it's a thread about a conspiracy theory, that's an almost unexplainable "discrepancy". You are one being rude, I am trying to discuss linguistics, and you bombard me with conspiracy theories.

There's a lot of ins and outs to this whole situation that it takes some time for someone new at this to appreciate.  I'd recommend starting by reading through these threads:

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.0
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=66236.0

I certainly don't mean to be coming off rude.  I think perhaps this misunderstanding might be because I'm an American with English as my first language and some of the nuance of how we communicate may be lost in translation when someone who does not speak English as their first language reads some of what we write.

@FalseProphet: I know this is a bit of philosophical question, but do you think that maybe the penguins are, on average, more intelligent than humans? They can understand each other without words.

@crutonius: I'd like to be introduced to this forum by some of its most intelligent members, if at all.

do you think that maybe the penguins are, on average, more intelligent than humans?

No they are complete idiots.

When it comes to science and technology, yes. But they appear to understand each other better than humans do.

When it comes to science and technology, yes. But they appear to understand each other better than humans do.

Humans are very good in non-verbal communication, too. Only our modern culture does very little to support this endowment.

But once I made friends with a young pigeon. She did some awesome things that I did not expect of pigeons. I would actually love to raise a raven. They are the smartest birds.

Well, different sign languages are no more mutually intelligible than different spoken languages are. Is the same true for animal languages?

Well, different sign languages are no more mutually intelligible than different spoken languages are. Is the same true for animal languages?

Animals do not talk much, at least in the sense of exchanging concepts. I think there is a common base for mammals. The facial expressions. the body language, there is much we share. I understood quite well how my cat felt and what he wanted, what was going on in his head. That's why birds are so interesting, they are quite different from us.

How do you mean animals are not exchanging concepts? We know what sound monkeys make when they mean "snake", and it's different from the sound they make when they mean "lion". Animals also regularly exchange abstract concepts. Birds can agree on the direction they will fly to. And we know that if a bee makes one circle in the air, that means "near", but if it makes an infinity sign in the air, that means "far away". These aren't things people who don't speak the same language could do.

How do you mean animals are not exchanging concepts?

They do, but not many concepts. Monkeys have a few dozens different "words" (actually sentences).

More words doesn't mean more concepts. Many of the words we use when we talk mean very little, or nothing at all. The most common word in English is "the", for example. It's also been hypothesised that all the concepts we use can be reduced to the so-called semantic primes, whose number is some low tens. When you take into account that human languages need to be learned, it's pretty obvious that animal comunication is more efficient than human communication is.

More words doesn't mean more concepts. Many of the words we use when we talk mean very little, or nothing at all. The most common word in English is "the", for example. It's also been hypothesised that all the concepts we use can be reduced to the so-called semantic primes, whose number is some low tens. When you take into account that human languages need to be learned, it's pretty obvious that animal comunication is more efficient than human communication is.

Since body language and facial expressions of mammals and humans are very similar, let us stick to the acoustic type.

The difference here between human language and monkey language is that the latter consists primarily of interjections: the sound that is produced is a whole sentence, like "there is a tiger". They do not have acoustic means to talk to each other like "there was a tiger yesterday. In human language, we divide a sentence into words and a word into sounds, leading to grammar, syntax and a phonetic system. Monkeya have these things only in a very basic and occasional form. Even if there are only some dozens "basic concepts" (I do not know that), human language can deliberately combine those concepts to form more abstract and sophisticated expressions.

Do not forget the dinosaurs built boats, so obviously they had language.

Do not forget the dinosaurs built boats, so obviously they had language.

Why? You do not have to talk when you build a boat.

Yes, they had to talk so that they could get the stuff to build the boats.

Yes, they had to talk so that they could get the stuff to build the boats.

When some alpha dinosaur started to fetch some boat stuff from the forest all the other started to do the same.

yeah, but they had to tell their fish stories at night by the fire.

yeah, but they had to tell their fish stories at night by the fire.

That's the issue. They ate their fish raw.

Do you think LovesLinguistics loves linguistics enough to ever read the thread himself?

Let's just stop talking about that. I noticed that one of the most popular threads on this forum was a thread about veganism, mostly involving discussions like this one. Such discussions obviously don't lead us anywhere.
So, can you summarize what arguments for and against the Laryngeal Theory were used earlier in this thread?

They're all on the first page of this thread, did you even read that far?