Some dogs can recognise hundreds of words, but to claim that this means a dog is as intelligent or linguistically advanced as a two-year-old human is pretty silly and meaningless, I think, and unfair to both dogs and people. It implies a facile interpretation of human and animal intelligence, an impoverished misinterpretation of language, and, for good measure, a hopeless anthropocentrism.
Sentence First, July 8, 2011.

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