Can Bigfoot Speak?

[Guest poignant]

MK Davis has a recent post of something appearing to mock the barking dogs. No opinion until someone does a sound analysis. Warning: it gets loud.

[Guest BFSleuth]

And he didn't just declare them sounds, he even created the Sasquatch Phonetic Alphabet. <--- (that was for you Cotter, BFSleuth, and southernyahoo)

Perhaps I'm not quite getting your point regarding the Sasquatch Phonetic Alphabet, as I understand it this is simply a transcription tool only. Beyond that what are you saying that Mr. Nelson is claiming, that he's translating the phonetic phrases into English? I'm not getting that from Nelson's presentations at all. While he has at times made some rather off handed possible interpretations of some phrases in his presentations he has also qualified such statements to say that he can't really make those interpretations with the available sound files only.

Unless you have further evidence to point to or link to regarding the claims of Mr. Nelson I think we've pretty well beat this strawman to a pulp.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled programming for this thread...

.... poignant, that is some freaky vocalization on that MK Davis video!

[southernyahoo]

Apparently not.

Where are the actual linguists that support Nelson?

Who would support him? The idea of bigfoots existence is practically taboo without biological proof. A presentation to scientists that didn't otherwise know BF existed, would go over about like a treky presenting the clingon dialect.

What do they have to say? Surely the fellow who developed the 'Sasquatch Phonetic Alphabet' (SPA) has presented this SPA to actual linguists for their input, right? So where are the results? Surely he's gotten his SPA published in a reputable journal by now, right? Where is it?

It doesn't hurt to be prepared for the proof.

When people say that Kirlin or Nelson are engaging in science... where are the published results outside of bigfootdom?

See above and below.

When I asked in what scientific journals did his Estimates of Pitch and Vocal Tract length from Recorded Vocalizations of Purported Bigfoot get published, I see some side-stepping, but no links. I mean, c'mon, he published that in a bigfoot book more than 20 years ago. Surely it doesn't take THAT long to get published in a science journal? Oh wait, maybe it does, if it doesn't stand up to scientific rigor.

The lack of peer review or scientific rigor is directly due to the inability of science to address any evidence of or about bigfoot in published literature without first establishing it's existence with purely objective and unhoaxable biological evidence. This is not a direct reflection of the work on the sounds.

[georgerm]

The BF sounds in this Davis tape seem less like language but more like calls or hoots. The reverberation part, is what is really unusual and the BF did it on the Sierra Tapes as well.

[Guest]

Heard some dude on Coast to Coast last night talking BF and BF's ability to talk to people...er...without actually talking!? The idea that BF talks is ludicrous! I'm thinking the ability to make and use tools would be a characteristic of BF if they were able to talk. According to this guy on C2C, he knows where some BF burial mounds are too, but so far it is too big a project to investigate these....huh? And...it gets better...these are the burial results of drowning BFs who were unable to swim from island to island...which he witnessed once (the swimming part)! And of course this guy knew all sorts about BF habits, and their apparent penchant for fish trading with the natives...er...two for me...three for you. Anyway, BF doesn't talk! The only thing BF does is practice his skills at avoiding leaving hard evidence that he exists...er...and avoid cameras and car accidents! Just sayn'.

Edited July 28, 2012 by summitwalker

[Guest Cervelo]

SY,

That is one tired wore out argument my friend.

So I'll give you the same old tired rebuttal!

There's no one on this planet that would not cherish the oppurtunity to discover Bigfoot and present it to the world.

The evidence doesn't warrant a pursuit of that discovery at this time obviously

You and I can keep poke'n around and maybe we will get lucky

Edited July 28, 2012 by Cervelo

[southernyahoo]

My point isn't that far from a skeptic's, Nothing is taken seriously by science regarding bigfoot, they say this is an appropriate stance by science since there is no proof. So why no published papers? It's right in front of you. It's simple, sounds, photo's, tracks, sightings are things they can assume to be hoaxed and ignore. That doesn't mean the science is bad, it just seems like putting the cart before the horse for most of them.

I like to study sounds, and think they can inform and guide your personal investigation to greater success. They are simply informative when heard and recorded under the right circumstances.

[Guest Cervelo]

^^^^^

I know, we might be on opposite sides of the fence alot, but at least we are still at the fence talking!

Edited July 28, 2012 by Cervelo

[indiefoot]

I get the impression that science doesn't get motivated till they see a pile of funding needing a home.

[Guest Cervelo]

^^^^

No doubt when your playing with someone else's money you better stay inside the lines of the coloring book but if the evidence was compelling enough I think it would happen.

And if you don't think science won't pursue some meaningless marlarkey google Higgs Boson sounds like a store LOL

[Guest RayG]

Let's get off Nelson and look at other examples of BF recordings that may sound like language.

I don't think we should ignore the man behind the curtain, so to speak. I've seen his resume and bigfoot videos presented a number of times without a single shred of evidence that:

1. he has the qualifications necessary to make pronouncements about 'sasquatch' language

2. the recordings have been tied directly to sasquatch

Unless you have further evidence to point to or link to regarding the claims of Mr. Nelson I think we've pretty well beat this strawman to a pulp.

You are correct, non-linguists can talk about this all day and not get anywhere. But what about Nelson's resume, that some think is just the cat's meow? It's interesting to note that typing U.S. Navy Cryptologic Voice Transcription School into Google only turns up bigfoot websites that quote his resume. So, I posted the following query on the US Navy Cryptology & Technology facebook page a few hours ago:

"Anyone know in what years linguist training took place in the U.S. Navy Cryptologic Voice Transcription School in San Angelo, Texas? Or is the school still open?"

I'll let you know what they have to say.

It also got me wondering what the Defense Language Institute would have to say about the qualifications one of their graduates, so I posted a query to them, that, in a nutshell asked:

What training would qualify a military crypto-linguist to decipher a completely unknown language, and even create a phonetic alphabet based upon that unknown language?

(I didn't mention that I graduated from the Canadian Forces School of Communications and Electronics Engineering, that I was employed by the Department of Defence for 15 years, and that for nine of those years I worked in Signals Intelligence, alongside a number of crypto-linguists.)

Oh, and it seems nobody in bigfootdom wants to get input from actual linguists on this matter. I emailed the Linguistic Society of America, and Linguist List back in 2010, as well as Dr. Stollznow, who holds a PhD in linguistics. She replied in early 2011, "I'm sure Mr. Nelson is highly competent in his own field, but this is well beyond his area of expertise."

Since the discussion has come up one more time, and yet again, nobody in bigfootdom seems interested in input from actual linguists, I have just today sent off emails to Dr. Goldstein, Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California; Dr. Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT; Dr. Matt Pearson, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Reed College; Dr. Vyv Evans, Professor of Linguistics, Bangor University; Dr. Mark Liberman, Trustee Professor of Phonetics, University of Pennsylvania; and the Linguistic Departments at both Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Twenty-one minutes after sending out the original email to him, I received a response from Dr. Chomsky. He basically said that creating a phonetic alphabet is relatively simple for someone who knows basic phonetics, but deciphering the language is a whole different matter. Generations of researchers would be required, and they would need something like the Rosetta stone.

Wow, I'm still a little bit in awe that I received an email from the 'father of modern linguistics', and so quickly too. (I read where he typically gets hundreds of emails each day)

Over the next few days, I'll try to contact a number of other linguists to see if I get any responses.

And some think being skeptical is easy. Pffffttttt.

RayG

[georgerm]

See Ray, we are all learning something and the discussion seems to be going in three directions.

1. I will admit that Nelson may not be qualified to break a BF language down into phonetics.

2. Did Nelson and the university determine accurately that the recordings are nonhuman?

3. Is Nelson part of a hoaxing scheme or just mistaken? If hoaxing then is this for financial gain? Did Ron Moorehead called in Nelson to verify BF has a rudementary language or did he pay off Nelson so more Sierra Sounds can be sold?

[southernyahoo]

Twenty-one minutes after sending out the original email to him, I received a response from Dr. Chomsky. He basically said that creating a phonetic alphabet is relatively simple for someone who knows basic phonetics, but deciphering the language is a whole different matter. Generations of researchers would be required, and they would need something like the Rosetta stone.

Wow, I'm still a little bit in awe that I received an email from the 'father of modern linguistics', and so quickly too. (I read where he typically gets hundreds of emails each day)

Over the next few days, I'll try to contact a number of other linguists to see if I get any responses.

And some think being skeptical is easy. Pffffttttt.

RayG

Thats awesome that Chomsky responded so quickly, but neither of us actually expected a different answer from him. Plussed ya for effort though.

[BobZenor]

Why would you or anyone be surprised by it? He answered the strawman argument that he was trying to decipher it from someone and the response was then used as an appeal to authority. Decipher could certainly have different meanings than translating it. It could be just deciphering the sounds to a phonetic alphabet. The only relevant point that I saw was that basically anyone that knows basic phonetics could create a phonetic alphabet. If Nelson didn't specifically say he was trying to translate it, why is that strawman argument being asked of experts to discredit him. Just because some might be confused by the semantics and the possibly confusing choice of words doesn't make the strawman argument valid. I am sure there are more qualified people in the world that could probably do a better job of defining the phonetics but it hasn't been attempted by them as far as I know.

It is no surprise at all to me that Krantz would have that predictable opinion. It goes against his absolute faith in gigantopithecus as the ancestor and Grover's ape hypothesis if they had language skills. That absolute faith of his really makes me doubt his understanding of human evolution. It was incomprehensible to me without certain assumptions about his basic philosophical beliefs.

I only know from listening to a few of Nelson's presentations but I never got the impression that he was irrational enough to think he could translate it to English. If he used the terms decipher, I would interpret that as from sounds to his phonetic alphabet. Even that would be extremely difficult and subjective. I wouldn't be much impressed by the conclusions besides the fact that it might have characteristics consistent with a language.

Edited July 29, 2012 by BobZenor

[bipedalist]

And, that is the point, there are characteristics consistent with a language, finit!