An interesting point brought up in chapter one of our text is whether humans are the only ones capable of language. While there have been instances where people have thought that animals have spoken, these animals have been shown to simply be imitating something they have heard humans say. It begs the question on whether animals could learn to communicate with humans using language. Or perhaps there are properties to the human language that make it impossible for other animals to learn. To answer these questions, we must first look at the properties of human language. One of these properties is communication. Communication is made of two components, communicative signals and informative signals. Communicative signals are behaviors used intentionally to provide information. You send these messages intentionally. An example would be if you tell someone, “I am lazy.” On the other hand, informative signals are behaviors used to rely information unintentionally. An example of this would be if you show up late with a messy appearance, which would signal that you might be lazy. They send the same message, however, one is intentional and the other is not. Communicative signals and informative signals are the key difference between how animals and humans communicate. While communication is the primary function of human language, it is not a distinguishing feature. All animals communicate in some way, although they do not reflect on how they communicate. Humans are capable of reflexivity, which means that we use language to think and talk about language itself, making it a distinguishing feature of human language. Another property of language is displacement, which is the ability to talk about things and events from the past or will happen in the future. On the other hand, animal communication is limited to here and now. The only animal who has a version of displacement is a honeybee, but at a very limited version. The next property of language is arbitrariness, which describes the fact that there is no natural connection between the linguistic form and its meaning. For example, the word “dog” does not form a dog. Another property of language is cultural transmission, which means that we acquire language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes. Another aspect of cultural language is the fact that we acquire language through culture, from one generation to the next. The next property of language of human language is productivity, which is when humans create new expressions, such as the word “selfie” to describe a picture of oneself or the word “google.” Animals, however, do not have the capability to do this. This is referred to fixed reference, which means that each signal in the communication system of animals is fixed in relating to a particular occasion or purpose. Another property of human language is duality, which is double articulation. This means that when we speak, we have the physical level at which we produce sounds and then combining sounds. These are called distinct sounds and distinct meanings. Animal communication cannot be broken down like human language, this is another example of them being fixed. With all these properties, it seems that the human language is a unique communication system that is unable to be be understood by other animals. However, animals will respond to words such as “stop, down, roll over, play dead.” This, however, does not mean that animals can understand human language. Most likely, they are responding to a sound stimulus, but are not understanding what it means. The animal most experimented on in regards to language have been chimpanzees. In the 1930s, two scientists raised a chimpanzee with their son. While it is reported that the chimpanzee understood about a hundred words, they did not say any of them. Another instance in the 1940 showed a chimpanzee named Viki who was able to poorly articulate words such as “mama, papa, cup.” There have also been cases of chimpanzees learning sign language. While it may seem that they understand language, no other creature has been observed “using language” like humans do, which includes the comprehensive and productive sense of language.
