ANIMALS AND

HUMAN
LANGUAGE
COMMUNICATION

C O M M U N I C AT I V E S I G N A L S I N F O R M AT I V E S I G N A L S
• Intentional communication. Behaviour • Behaviour that provides information,
used intentionally to provide usually unintentionally.
communication. Example: body language
GLOSSOLALIA
Also known as “speaking in tongues”
(Pentecost), it is the production of sounds and
syllables in a stream of speech that seems to
have no communicative purpose, as the
speaker has no control of it.
PROPERTIES OF
HUMAN LANGUAGE
REFLEXIVITY
The key aspect that differentiates us from
animals is that we can use language to think and
talk about language. Animals do communicate
with each other, but dogs don’t reflect on the
type of bark they use on each occasion.
DISPLACEMENT

• Animal communication seems to be

designed exclusively for the here and now.
• Humans can refer to past and future time.
This property allows language users to talk
about things not present in the immediate
environment. Displacement even allows us
to talk about things and places that do not
exist (leprechauns, Krypton) or whose
existence we are not sure of (God, heaven).
ARBITRARINESS

• There is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its

meaning.
• Signals and sounds emitted by animals such as birds are limited
and have a direct connection with the message conveyed.
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION

• We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not

from parental genes.
• Language is passed from one generation to the other.
• Animals’ communication is always the same irrespective the
country they live in.
• Birds learn their songs through exposition, too. However, since
their “language” is instinctive, birds in isolation will still produce
songs albeit abnormal in some way.
PRODUCTIVITY

• Humans are continuously creating new expressions by

manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects
and situations. This essentially means that the potential number
of utterances in any human language is infinite.
• Animal’s language or set of signals is fixed and limited. These
signals are fixed in terms of their reference and cannot be
manipulated (fixed reference).
 DUALITY

• Human language operates at two levels simultaneously:

sublexical level (individual sounds) and lexical level (words).
This duality allows us to create new words easily by means of
combinations of different sets of individual sounds.
• Animal set of signals cannot be fragmented or recombined to
form new words with new meanings. They are fixed forms.
TALKING TO
ANIMALS

C H I M PA N Z E E S A N D L A N G U A G E
CHIMPANZEES AND LANGUAGE

• Gua was able to understand about 100

words but did not say any of them.
• Beatrix and Allen Gardner tried to teach
Viki to “say” English words. She managed
to produce some words albeit rather poorly
articulated (mama, papa and cup)
WASHOE

• Beatrix and Allen Gardner decided to teach sign language

to another female chimpanzee named Washoe.
• In a period of three and a half years, she learnt to use signs
for more than a hundred words and even to combine them
to produce short sentences such as “gimme tickle,” “more
fruit,” and “open food drink” (open the refrigerator).
• Washoe seemed to have created new signs for words (e.g.,
bib) and combinations (e.g., water bird in reference to a
swan). This seemed to indicate potential for productivity.
• She could understand more signs than she produced and
was capable of holding rudimentary conversations in
question-answer sequences.
SARAH (PLASTIC SHAPES)
AND LANA (YERKISH)
• Sarah was taught to associate different
plastic shapes with objects. Unlike
Washoe, she was not treated like a
human child, started training at 5 years
old, and was trained with food
rewards.
• Similarly, Lana was trained to use
Yerkish. This artificial language
consists of a series of symbols
attached to a keyboard linked to a
computer.
 KANZI
• Kanzi was Matata’s adopted baby. While
Matata was attempting to learn Yerkish, Kenzi
was always with her.
• Matata did not do very well but Kenzi
spontaneously started to use Yerkish language
with great ease.
• Kanzi eventually developed a large symbol
vocabulary (about 250 forms).
• By the age of eight, he was reported to be able
to demonstrate understanding of spoken
English at a level comparable to a two-and-a-
half-year-old human child.
• He also used a set of “gentle noises” as words
to refer to things such as bananas, grape and
juice.
THE CONTROVERSY OF USING
LANGUAGE
• All the chimpazees shown here learned to use languages created by humans,
not by themselves.
• Yet, they were able to use and understand language like a human child about
to begin pre-school.
• Can we say then that chimpazees can use language like a human being? Sure!
But there is still a big difference: while a human child can go on creating an
infinite number of utterances once they master their language, a chimpanzee
will never become fluent in a language to this extent.
REFERENCES
• Yule, George (2020). The Study of Language (7th edition). CUP.