Re: Language of saurian/reptilian beings

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:
>
> >
> > Does it make sense? Well, I guess in one's fantasy anything is possible,
> > so why
> > not?
> > The only thing that doesn't convince me is the argument that birds
> > descend from
> > reptiles as a justification for tonality. In my imagination, the animals
> > you
> > describe above would rather growl than sing.
>
>Sorry to be picky, but dinosaurs were not reptiles.
That's ENTIRELY a question of definitions. If you take a cladistic view,
dinosaurs (along with birds and mammals) are defintely reptiles (since
they're all descended from a common ancestor), or at least belongs to the
same group as crocodiles, lizzards etc if you fancy to call this something
else than "reptiles". In more Linnean ones, there's a variety of ways of
sorting up the land-based non-amphibian vertebrates. Some examples I've
seen:

Reptiles (inc dinosaurs, pterosaurids, etc); Birds; Mammals

Reptiles; Dinosaurs; Pterosaurids; Birds; Mammals

Lacertids (=snakes, lizzards and turtles); Dinosaurs (inc crocodiles,
pterosaurids and birds), Mammals

Reptiles (inc dinosaurs), Pterosaurids, Birds, Mammals

>And we have no idea what kind of sounds those
>animals produced (to our knowledge, they could have as well sung all the
>songs
>of Frank Sinatra ;))) ). But it's not implausible that the smaller
>dinosaurs
>had some ranges of sounds different from growling.
>
>Now it's true that the title of this thread is a little misleading, talking
>about "reptilian beings" and then comparing with velociraptors. It's
>difficult
>to compare those two kinds of animals which, beside some superficial
>resemblance, are completely different.
Actually, your Velociraptor is closer related to a crocodile than the
crocodile is to a lizzard. If you claim that the 'raptor and the crock are
completely different, than you shouldn't be talking about reptilian beings
(nor their completely differentness to anything else) as "reptiles", whether
taken to include dinosaurs or not, encompass even greater variety.

                                           Andreas

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