Animals and Human Language Part 1
I’m going to talk here about Animals and Human language, and this is the
first part of this blog. You can watch my lectures on it afterwards if you do
not understand any concept. The lectures are both in URDU and ENGLISH languages
individually.
You Tube Lectures:
ANIMALS AND HUMAN LANGUAGE [ ENGLISH ]
ANIMALS AND HUMAN LANGUAGE [ URDU/HINDI ]
Animals and Human Language
Terrence Deacon who is a neuropathologist, and he has written a book The Symbolic Species (1997) , he has shared his experience that one evening in mid 1980s while returning from a cruise with his wife he passed by an aquarium, where he noticed a sound approaching them, “Hey! Hey! Get out there!,” he looked around that they might be late and a security guard was asking them leave, but there was no one. Again, after a while they heard a sound, “Hey! Hey you!” Deacon noticed that four Harbor seals were seemed to saying this in aquarium.
We may produce two types of
signals. Informative signals are produced unintentionally
e.g., if I sneeze (indicates I might have cold), I shift around chair
constantly (I might be worried), etc. Communicative signals are
produced when we intentionally communicate like "I am here for job
interview" or "I am going to UK tomorrow." Animals also
communicate in the same way, but they differ from us significantly in their
communication. Here, we shall discuss some characteristics of human language
and see whether animals have some of them or not.
Properties of Human Language
1. Reflexivity:
Ayesha use very complex language; she
is very eloquent while Ali speaks in very simple language. The property of reflexivity
enables us to reflect on language, in other words by using language we can talk
about language itself as in the first sentence we discuss two people and their
style of language. This is the property which has made us capable of describe language,
we describe language in terms of its sounds, words, grammatical structure, etc.
Animals do not seem to have this
property, a dog might not able to say another dog that make your
"barking" more complex or make it simple. A cat might never to be
able to describe her meow.
2. Displacement:
I shall go to Lahore tomorrow. Do you
know that aliens exist or not? I have not seen angels. My routine was hectic
during graduation. I am going to UK next year for studies.
The property of displacement makes us
able to talk not only about present, but also about future, past and even we
can talk about those things whose existence is not sure (aliens). This is the
property of displacement which enable us to do so.
Animals are unlikely to talk about
past, future, or about novel things. If a cat meow, it meows for now, it does
not meow to talk about the events of last year. Animals communication is about
the immediate environment. In one experiment, it was observed that bees might
have displacement because they were able to communicate about the different
places of nectar they have visited to, but even they had very limited amount of
displacement in their communication. The bees might not be able to say,
"that delicious bush and rose we were visiting since 2017."
3. Arbitrariness:
Why cat is not called cat in all
languages or why we call cat a cat? The property of arbitrariness suggests that
there is no natural connection between the word and the meaning associated with
it. English cat, Urdu billi, Arabic kalb, all
refers to same four leg creature with fur on its body.
There are some words in languages
around the world as well as in English like cuckoo, splash, buzz,
which echo like their natural sounds but such words are very rare in all
languages plus the written form itself is arbitrary and have no natural
connection with that concept.
In animals’ communication, the signals
seem to have fixed connection with the concept. Many animals produce some
signals only at the time of mating or at the time of mating. Thus, their
communication does not seem to be arbitrary. An animal cannot use a signal to
create a new meaning other than the which it was not inherited. All chimpanzees
will use same signals for creating territory.
4. Cultural Transmission:
We might be inherited the colour of
eyes, hair colour and other physical feature as well as DNA from our parents,
but not language. An infant born to an English couple is adopted by an Urdu
couple, that infant will start speaking Urdu and not English. We acquire our
first language from the culture in which we are living in.
The animals have instinctive or rather
fixed language when they are born. Some research on birds suggest that if they
are kept in isolation for first seven weeks, even then they are able to produce
songs on their own while the human children raised in isolation do not speak
anything.
5. Productivity:
We have a limited number of sounds in
our language (in English at least 40 sounds). but we are able to produce
hundreds and thousands of words from that. Not just that, we create new
expressions whenever we invent a new thing or encounter a new situation. There
was no word like "laptop" unless it was invented. We are also able
to produce words for totally new situations. You might have observed children,
if they see something new, they are able to explain it, if a child sees an
elephant and does not know its name, he/she might be able to describe it,
"Mom, I saw an animal with big ears, very fat, grey colour," etc.
In one experiment, a hive on honeybee was kept on the foot of a radio tower, ten honeybees were taken to the top of the tower to taste a nectar which was placed there, these bees were brought together to their hive, they started communicate to other bees. Honeybees produce different types of dance to communicate other bees to move in a certain direction but they were unable to bring other bees to the top of tower, Karl Von Frisch concluded that there might be no signal for "up" in bees communication, hence there productivity is also limited.
The animals do not seem to have this element. Cicadas have only 4 signals and one of the signals is only produced by female moths during mating season, it is actually a scent-based signal. Vervet monkeys have only 36 vocal calls, lemurs (small monkeys in Madagascar) have only 3 basic sounds, one of them is CHUTTER, which they produce when they saw a snake and RRAUP, which they produce when they saw an eagle. In some researches, some snakes were thrown in air in front of them and they produced no signal suggesting that they do not have productivity, this property of animals communication is called fixed reference, but in this novel situation we might say "that's a flying snake, amazing!"
In next blog we'll talk about different attempts of teaching human language to animals.
Read the previous blog: THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
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