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From: Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: 7 Words That Dogs Can Understand (And 4 That No Dog Can)
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 15:00:04 -0400
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On 3/11/2025 1:03 PM, Rich Ulrich wrote:
> 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.
> 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip_uVTWfXyI

Chaser knows the names of over 1000 toys.
....and yes, this has been shown not to be a
'Clever Hans' effect, with the dog going
out of sight of its owner to pick toys.

pt