The First Lecture

Q1/ what is the difference between informative signals and communicative signals?
1- communicative signals: they are the signals sent by people intentionally. Like
speaking.
2- informative signals: they are the signals sent by people unintentionally. Like
speaking aggressively indicates that you are angry.

Q2/ how animals exactly communicate, do they have language? And why?
No, animals don’t have language, they have a communicative system. Because there
are different features (properties) that a language should have, and the communication
of animals lack them all. they just use sounds or signals to communicate.

Q3/ what are the properties (features) of languages.

Q4/ what are the differences between human language and animal communicative
system?
1- reflexivity (reflexiveness): we can use the language to think and talk about the
language itself. While the animals cannot.
E.g.1: my language is beautiful E.g.2: the English language is internationally important
2- displacement: we can use the language to talk about future, past and present, while
the animals cannot. Their communication is designed for the moment.
E.g.1: I ate yesterday E.g.2: I am eating now E.g.3: I will eat tomorrow
3- arbitrariness: it means that the meaning of the sign isn’t related to the form of it.
E.g.1: when I go to English speaker and say (‫)كلب‬, is he going to understand me?
Absolutely not. this is an evidence that the meaning of the word isn’t related to the form
of it.
4- productivity/creativity/open-endedness: it means that a language is constantly
developing, and the number of utterances are infinite. A language before 100 years ago
is not the same today. The animals have fixed reference, just a number of signals.
5- culture transmission: it means that a language isn’t inherited from parents but
transmitted from the existed culture.
E.g.1: let us say that I am Iraqi and married from an Iraqi woman, before we have a child,
we traveled to America. Suddenly in America we have a baby, the baby here will not
learn Arabic, he will learn the existed language which is English
6- duality (double articulation): in any language we have two levels that are organized
simultaneously. Which are
A- physical (form) level: it means that we can produce meaningless individual sounds
such as /h/ /d/. they are limited.
B- meaning level: it means that we can produce meaningful words and sentences from
the combination of individual sounds. They are unlimited.

Q5/ why the feature of duality is regarded as the most economical feature?
Because from limited individual sounds (physical level) we can produce unlimited words
(meaning level).

Additional information
Q1/ can we regard the communication as a distinguishing feature between the human
language and the animal communication system?
- no, we cannot, all the creatures communicate in some way.

Q2/ is there any small exception for the (displacement feature)?

Yes, there is a small exception regarding bees. When a bee finds a nectar, it returns to
its colleagues to inform them about the place of the nectar by doing a complex dance.
But this is very limited communication.

Note:
In the property of arbitrariness, there are some words that have less arbitrariness like
crash, cuckoo, slurp, whirr and squelch. They are called onomatopoeia