Human Language Characteristics Differences from Animals Language Objectives

Human Language, Characteristics & Differences from Animals Language

Objectives of the Chapter • The chapter will provide answers to following questions: • Is it possible that a creature could learn to communicate with humans using language? • does human language have properties that make it so unique that it is quite unlike any other communication system and hence unlearnable by any other creature?

Can Animals talk? ? • There a lot of stories about creatures that can talk • They are fantasy or fiction characters • Animals simply imitate something they have heard humans say • creatures are capable of communicating, certainly with other members of their own • species.

Communication • Human communication as well as language differs from animals in many ways. • Communicative signals: (behavior used • intentionally to provide information) • Informative signals (behavior that provides • information, usually unintentionally) • Human beings communicate using both signals whereas animals use only former

Properties of Human Language • Reflexivity: using language to think and talk about language itself • All creatures communicate in some way as human beings. • But other creatures do not reflect on the way they create their communicative messages • One barking does not advice the other barking dog saying: “Hey, you should lower your bark to make it sound more alarming” • Humans are clearly able to reflect on language and its uses.

Displacement • Understanding the message beyond time & place • Animal communication seems to be designed for current time & place (Cat Meows ) • Animal can not talk about events from past • When your dog says GRRR, it means GRRR, right now • Humans can refer to past and future time. • Displacement allows us to talk about things & places whose existence cannot be sure (angels, superman) • Only honey bees do have this property (dance to locate a place)

Arbitrariness • The relation between a linguistic form & its meanings is arbitrary & there is no natural connection • Word “Kalab” & “dog” do not have inherent relationship with “hairy four-legged barking object” • Change in the relationship between linguistic sign & objet is called arbitrariness • Onomatopoeic words are less arbitrary • Animals lack arbitrariness as the set of signals used in communication is finite.

Productivity • creativity: open-endedness • Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. • Number of utterances in any language is infinite • Animals have limited vocal signals: monkey: 36 • Animals cannot create new signals: even honey bee would fail to communicate the location if it is new • Animal communication is described in terms of fixed reference

Cultural transmission • We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes. A Korean born child brought up in UK would speak English not Korean • The process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next is described as cultural transmission. • We are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language but acquire our first language as children in a culture. • Animals are born with signals patterns that are instinctive

Duality • Human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously • We have distinct sounds at one level and distinct meanings at other level • Level 1: /n/, /b/ and /i/: no intrinsic meaning • Level 2: In words bin & nib, sounds combine in different pattern & give different meanings • With a limited set of discrete sounds, we can produce infinite no of words. • In animal language, duality does not exist.