Re: 7 Words That Dogs Can Understand (And 4 That No Dog Can)

On Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:03:06 +0000, Paul Wolff
<bounceme@thiswontwork.wolff.co.uk> wrote:

On Thu, 6 Mar 2025, at 06:46:28, Hibou posted:

Le 02/03/2025 à 18:16, Judith Latham a écrit :

>
A dog can understand 7 words. How many barks does a human understand?
I'll bet it's less than 7. [...]

>
It all depends on the meaning of 'to understand'. Words are not simple
things to us. They have denotations and connotations, may conjure up
memories, chunks of knowledge and history (moon, Nazi, empire,
slavery...). They have spellings and pronunciations, declensions and
conjugations, may belong to certain registers and dialects.... Humans
know this. We use our languages with a wealth of understanding.
>
Dogs don't. They simply don't have the mental apparatus for it. When
they recognise and respond to 'sit', 'fetch', or 'wait', it's more like
a human responding to a kettle clicking off when it's finished boiling.
>
What's really astonishing is that we do have the apparatus. Humans are
extraordinary beings, the product of long and tortuous evolution that
may have few parallels in in the Universe. I find this a sobering
thought.
>

When we talk of the numbers of /anything/ in the universe, I start by
counting the number of galaxies we have seen, and start multiplying from
there.
>
But as for dogs, and being a chemist by education, I was very impressed
by Six-Thirty. Over a thousand English words, we were told. And he was
said to have been based on a real one. (Lessons in Chemistry, q.v.)

Did anyone ever rule out the Clever Hans Effect? cues from the owner?
A horse doing arithmetic was impressive.

--
Rich Ulrich