Elaine Ostrach Chaika's Blog: elainechaika.com/dogs

When I was 18, I forsook civilization and eloped with a Maine wilderness guide. He spoke in an old Maine accent that younger people have since eschewed..  Oh, Harold was young, but in 1952, all Eastern New Englanders still dropped their [r]’s and, in rural areas, had a certain cadence, which I later discovered in old-timers in rural Rhode Island when, years later, in 1971, I moved, minus Harold(My second husband came from the Bronx and had a Noo Yawk accent.)

However one thing Harold said was “If I be” for ‘If I were.” “If I be” is a much older form of the English subjunctive, not often heard in the United States. Harold was a descendant of British soldiers in the War of 1812, soldiers who had defected to the wide open New England countryside. Unfortunately, I was not a Linguistics scholar during my interlude in Maine, so I didn’t know how to analyze a dialect as I do now.

I do know the Pilgrims came from Cambridge and bequeathed their upper-class scholarly accent to later settlers. To this day, although the accent from my childhood is no longer spoken, the first vowels in words like orange and horrible are still pronounced as today’s British educated speakers do. Similarly, we don’t call aunts, “ants,” and I use the same broad [a] in can’t, half, calf, and laugh. I suspect that the old Maine accent derived from the defecting soldiers. (Maine is not one of the 13 original colonies, so the Pilgrims had no clout there.)

My book Humans, Dogs and Civilization argues that dogs are not descended from modern gray wolves, which many dog researchers claim. In short, it is considered Gospel truth that early humans tamed such wolves to hunt for them.  I show that taming such wolves is an arduous task and rarely does a wolf become tame enough to serve humans. I claim that dogs come from smaller canines who had lost their ability–or never had it–to kill a deer or horse or even to break into their prey’s tough hides. Moreover, I posit–with reason–that dogs wooed humans. That is, dogs domesticated themselves.

Well, I’ve gotten a lot of flack for this, although the book provides evidence that early dogs weren’t pack animals. Rather, they exploited smaller game, like mice, rats, voles and shrews. Their jaws weren’t as powerful as a wolf’s, nor were their teeth as strong.

Well, Angela Perry has published a new study showing that those who consider large wolves the forebears of dogs ignore the fossil evidence.  In short, she claims that dogs today don’t descend from large wolves with formidable teeth and jaws. Actually, other scientists have cautioned that the ancestor of dogs come from a canine that is extinct. Perry shows that scholars don’t consider the variation in canine fossils prehistorically. When they do look at fossils, they focus on large wolves. She argues that the early dog skulls came from smaller animals. I myself offered DNA evidence that modern wolves don’t have a mutation that all dogs today do, and the mutation occurred 5 million years ago, long before hunting hominids

In short, I am correct in claiming that dogs are not tamed modern gray wolves. Interestingly, Mark Derr, who objected to my scenario, has recently said in his blog on Psychology Today that dogs developed from small wolves, not American wolves. That’s a start. The Gospel is being revised.

Interestingly, nothing today is worthy of the name science unless it is countable and a candidate for arcane statistical measures. Yes, I do have papers amenable to such counting, but whatever happened to scientific discourse? Such discourse evaluates theories and uses argumentation based on data and refutable by logic.

Since my own research is often based on real life behaviors, often statistical measures can’t be applied. Oh, yes, simple “yes-no” answers are countable, but more complex behaviors and responses sometimes can not. In my research on schizophrenic speech, we could count overt cohesion markers in narratives of both schizophrenics and “normals.” And, we found that the narratives of each group were reliably different.

However, in my book, Humans, Dogs, and Civilization” many of the behaviors in dogs could not be subjected to statistical measurement. Rather, I had to analyze the behaviors and reason backwards to what the dogs had thought out. Such analysis as my chapter on Theory of Mind, relied on such reasoning. Interestingly, when I suggested to Adam Miklósi, the world’s premier dog studies researcher, a man I respect highly, that he try to replicate that facet of dog cognition, he replied that it couldn’t be done in in an experiment. That is, how would you count the behaviors. Such interpretations are anecdotal. Huh?

Well, in my book I show that Winkle, a Dalmatian, showed two clear instances of theory of mind. That term, theory of mind means  “if I do this, people will assume that.” The first example comes from the fact that my other dog at the time, Teddy, had a very poor appetite. Winkle was voracious. So, I had to tell him, NO!” He could not gobble down his food and then scarf down Teddy’s.

One morning at breakfast, having fed the dogs, I was enjoying my coffee and the daily paper. I noticed Winkle kept walking in front of my table, and then back to the dog bowls. So, I followed him as he passed me by. To my surprise, I found him under the bed, and, with a flashlight also saw several piles of dogfood.  I never told him he couldn’t take Teddy’s food. Only that he couldn’t eat it! So, he was saving her food until I left for work an hour later. He clearly reasoned that it was all right to deposit the food for a later repast since he didn’t eat it while I was home.

More telling, Winkle loved raw fish. I was living in a cabin at the Stillwater River, prime salmon fishing area. Several fishermen were enjoying the sport, and tossing the fish they got into their creels. I sat outside, reading a novel. Winkle suddenly began racing around the shore, and into the nearby woods.  The fishermen ignored him, discounting him as a goofy dog. However, I notice that as he was racing, he’d snatch a fish and race to the woods with it. Then, having eaten it (I got up and checked), he’d restart his running. That he ate the fish immediately in the woods indicated two things. One, the fishermen couldn’t see him eat their catch, so they wouldn’t stop him. Two, he’d better eat each fish as soon as he caught it, or other animals might get them. Yes, this behavior can’t be counted, but does that invalidate my analysis? How would you analyze such behavior?

You also have to read in the book  about Skeezix and Scamp and their Great Treat Scam. Again, how would you explain their behavior?

Many insights can be gained by intelligent analyzing that doesn’t arise á la Freud from pure theory not based on fact. There is no way intellectually motivated behavior can be explained by counting. You must think of what is behind the act in straight-on reasoning.

I come from a line of famed Biblical scholars and was exposed to such reasoning from infancy on. Moreover,  my doctorate is in Linguistics, which demands you figure out motives in uttering something in a given situation. Yes, we did rely on statistics for some things, but not all interpretations from the linguistic data. Of course, dogs don’t provide linguistic data as a rule. However, their actions are interpretable. Sometimes, observation without appealing to an abstract theory is justifiable. The only “theory” I used for explaining my dogs is that they must be adept at reading humans because they know whom to beg, whom to avoid, and what to do to get treats. My observations also show that they have a theory of mind,something that philosophers like Daniel Dennett deny. Let him explain my dogs’ behaviors.

When I was a child, it was Gospel that we had to speak “correctly.” Why one way of saying things was wrong, another was right. or who decided and why they did was never explained.  Well, it was wrong to say ain’t, for instance. It was also a sin to say s/he don’t.

Well ain’t meant “I am not.” It’s a contraction like isn’t or can’t. It extended its usage to other pronouns, giving present tense ain’t in he ain’t, she ain’t, you ain’t, they ain’t.

Another shibboleth is saying he don’t. Well, I was listening to Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. In the song, “The Sun in its Blazing Glory,” one hears clearly, “He don’t explain…” That was in 19th century opera, hardly a lower class production.

All the so-called “wrong” grammar errors come from dialectal differences in England, and, later, in America. For the most part “correct” speech derives from certain dialects considered prestigious . What makes or breaks a certain grammar rule is wholly an artifact of who is saying it. That has nothing to do with why it’s good or bad.

Where have all the taboo words gone? Absolutely, those words couldn’t have been uttered by “ladies and gentlemen.”, which included all middle class (and of course upper class) speakers of English. Oh, you know those words: the f word, c word, s word, b word, but you’d never have said them. Oh, in the movies, Rhett Butler’s famous, “Frankly, I don’t give a damn,” had a battle with the board of censors over the d word.” That was in 1939, and so daring, it was never repeated in any other movie. Instead, what happened is that the formerly taboo words became prevalent in the late 20th century in movies. Now, of course, damn is too mild. So fuck, cunt, fuckin’, bullshit, shit, and piss have replaced it.

Even at the nice Catholic college I taught at, my nice students would holler at someone on campus, “Where the fuck were you. The party was fuckin’ awesome.” Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and Tropic of Capricorn were banned in the USA for use of

It has amazed me that bilingual parents don’t speak both their languages to their children on the grounds that “they don’t want them to have an accent in English, or they don’t want them to confuse the languages” Well, I grew up bilingual. Three of my grandchildren are bilingual. And I’ve known friends and neighbors whose children learned two languages at once.

Babies are born with the ability to learn any languages around them. If one parent speaks to them in Chinese, French, German, Russian,Spanish or any other language, and the other parent speaks English, or any other language to them, then the babies speaks the appropriate language to each. If both parents are bilingual and use both languages to the baby, then the baby still becomes bilingual. What’s amazing is that the child has no foreign accent in either language. Even more, if they go to another country in which one language is spoken, and they  interact with others there, they will learn the slang and idioms of that language.

Want more? Get Language the Social Mirror, 4th ed. by Elaine Chaika and check out the chapter on how babies learn to speak and also the one on bilingualism.

I happened to mention to a fellow dog lover that without dogs humans couldn’t have built civilizations (See my 2015 book Humans, Dogs & Civilization.) Her answer was,, “I don’t doubt it. Dogs and horses….” Yes, without horses, humans couldn’t have had large-scale wars, although a fossilized Bonze Age war site shows that humans were capable of horrendous face to face battles. Horses allowed them to do even more damage, but that’s not my point.

Humans couldn’t have domesticated horses until dogs partnered with them. Horses in the wild live in tightly contained herds. Stallions guard the perimeters of the herd, protecting the fillies and colts. There is no way that humans can breach such a herd. They’d be stomped to death if they tried.

Dogs, however, drawing on their lupine heritage, but being smaller and more lithe than modern gray wolves, could breach the herd.  Horses, like most prey animals have superb side vision. A human trying to sneak in, standing erect, would have been visible to the stallions, but dogs, on all fours wouldn’t be seen. Dogs, then, could wend their way around the stallions legs, and then cut a filly or a colt or both, out of the herd and drive it to humans.

Undoubtedly, at first, those hapless horses were herded to humans for their meat. Later, as dogs kept herding the horses, the surplus ones formed their own herds, but were fenced in by humans. Then, the humans got the guts to try to ride them. Voila! It was tough going, but the advantages for transport must have been immediately recognized. Also, once humans were living in villages with their herds of sheep, also built up by dogs, and their horses, but with less active hunting, rambunctious youngsters would have made riding horses exciting.

In any event, horses weren’t domesticated until around 4,000 years ago. Dogs partnered with humans at least 16,000 years ago. Actually, the mass carcasses of wooly mammoths suggest the origin of dogs thousands of years before then.

Well, scholars have to proclaim something new or else they wouldn’t get published. For Linguists and Anthropologists, this often means finding a remote group of people and then observing them in their daily rounds. Sure enough, they find something. In Science Daily, March 2016, an interesting article on one of the few remaining “primitive tribes” in the world, states that these people,who have no words for what time it is, and also have no writing systems, uses gesture to indicate time.  That is, if someone asks the time, the person points to the position of the sun. Very interesting. I like it.

However, the writer goes on. He says they have no adverbs. Instead, they make grimaces and other facial expressions, as well as hand and arm gestures to indicate things like rapidity, dislike, and so on. From this, they conclude their great discovery. Linguists believe that signing meanings occur only in the deaf, who can’t hear speech. What? Have they not read about body language? (They can read my book Language the Social Mirror, 4th ed. about kinesics, as the scientific study of body motion and facial expression is called.

Everyone talks with their hands. Different cultures may use different gestures, but people with full hearing language usually accompany their words by a variety of kinesic movements. Haven’t you ever found yourself moving your hands as you speak into a telephone? It’s so natural to use gesture, that we do it even if the recipient can’t see it!

As for facial expressions that accompany our spoken words, looks of disapproval, sadness, happiness, incredulity and other feelings often are displayed.

Gestural communication accompanying speech is part of our language heritage. Even things like speaking rapidly or slowly emphasize what we’re talking about. They are not confined to “primitive” cultures, no does this “discovery” add to our understanding of how languages evolved or how babies learn them. Babies understand the pointing gesture–and angry faces–before they can speak. As for evolution of language, we are, after all, descended from apes. Most likely, then, gestures preceded speech, and then evolved along with speech. Hmmm. I’ve written a paper on that.

Any human speaker can create new words in any languages they speak. That’s Gospel in Linguistics. There’s no point in any language that prohibit a new word from being formed. Nor is there any word in any language that can’t be used in a context so that it can’t take on a new meaning. Human languages can always create an infinite number of meanings, either from invention of new words or from being used in new contexts.  Since, of all animal communication systems, only humans have this ability, then how did this come about? Simple, actually,

Like other animals, hominids started out with communications in which each sound had one specific meaning. At some point, however, humans became able to divorce meaning from basic sounds. That is, sounds became meaningless in and of themselves. Instead, hominids began to combine meaningless sounds into meaningful words–and then to combine such words into meaningful phrases and sentences.

What advantages did this give humans?  Well, for one, it greatly enhanced the number of messages anyone could make. Just think of words composed of the same sounds, but those sounds, in a different order, make new words.  For instance, may, yam, Mya, and Amy use the same individual sounds. Or, dens, send, ends, end, Ned, and Neds all share sounds.  The kicker is to consider a word like Plastic. Using only those six sounds, one can get many words: last, past, cast, scat, tic, tics, lip, lips, lisp, alt, act, acts, tip, tips, spit, clap, claps, clasp, sic, sac, clip, clips, sit, its, tap, taps, pact, pacts, pit, pits, salt, cap, caps, scalp, pat, pats, asp, pal, sat. Moreover, you could make more words from the same sounds. Aps, for instance, uses ,

, and . The current spelling of this new words is , but we articulate only one

.

It’s part of the new canon of dogdom to deny that dogs feel guilty when they break their humans’ rules. Rather, when they are caught, they display guilt to ameliorate punishment.   They don’t feel at all guilty.

However, most, if not all,  dog owners know the signs of dog  guilt. Is a guilty display to ameliorate punishment inborn in dogs? Nobody teaches them to look guilty. Also, why would dogs have such an inborn display to use whenever they’ve disobeyed?  In the absence of actually feeling guilt, how can dogs know how to behave so that humans will recognize  guilt?  Then, too, if feigning guilt is inborn into dogs, how did that evolve? For an inborn behavior to develop, there has to be some impetus, such as guilty feelings.

I have a mini-dog pack. It consists of 2 Maltese and 1 Yorkipoo. I got a lesson  in guilt from Scamp, a 7 pound Maltese. The other day, I had to leave the 3 of them home while I was running errands. Maltese especially take greeting seriously and will even fight for the right to be first greeter.When I returned home, Scamp didn’t greet me. In fact, he was nowhere to be found.

“That’s odd,” I thought, so I called him.  He hesitantly came downstairs. When he finally obeyed, he walked very slowly to me, body lowered, tail down, and eyes averted.  “Uh oh”. I said to my friend Mylene, “Scamp did something wrong. I wonder if he peed on the rug.”

So I took off my shoes and walked around the rug in the living room. Sure enough, it was soaking wet in one area.  Yes, Scamp has been housebroken since puppyhood, but he has a weak bladder. I usually let him out every couple of hours. However, on this day, I had been out for 4 hours.  Apparently, Scamp couldn’t hold it in that long, but he definitely felt ashamed of himself. That was clear.