Comparison of Human Language and Animal Communication

Similarity:  Both are composed of SIGNS (forms with meaning)

Six Key Differences:

1. Animal: The signs of animal systems are inborn.

    Human:  The capacity to be creative with signs is inborn,

            but the signs (words) themselves are acquired culturally.

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2. Animal: Communication is set responses to stimuli (indexes).

    Human: Not limited to use as an index.     

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3. Animal: Each sign has one and only one function; each meaning can be expressed only in one way

    Human: Signs often have multiple functions; one meaning can be expresses in many ways

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4. Animal: Not naturally used in novel way

    Human: Creative, can be adapted to new situations

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5. Animal: Closed inventory of signs; only a set number of different messages can be sent

    Human: Open ended.  Grammar (rules of syntax) allows a virtually unlimited number of messages to be constructed

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6. Animal: Change extremely slowly, with the speed of genetic   evolution.

    Human: Change rapidly as a cultural phenomenon.

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ANIMAL COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

Robert Mannell (1999)

The aim of this lecture (1) is to examine the following questions:-

1. How do the forms of communication used by animals differ from human language?2. Can animals be taught to use languages that are analogous to or the same as human

language?

Natural Animal Communication

Pearce (1987, p252) cites a definition of animal communication by Slater (1983, see Pearce for reference), which we will also use as a working definition in this lecture:-Animal communication is "the transmission of a signal from one animal to another such that the sender benefits, on average, from the response of the recipient".

This loose definition permits the inclusion of many types of behaviour and allows "communication" to be applied to a very large range of animals, including some very simple animals.

Natural animal communication can include:-

Chemical signals (used by some very simple creatures, including protozoa) Smell (related to chemical signals, eg. pheromones attract, skunk secretions repel) Touch Movement Posture (eg. dogs, geese) Facial gestures (eg. dogs snarling) Visual signals (eg. feathers) Sound (eg. very many vertebrate and invertebrate calls)

Such signals have evolved to:-

attract (especially mates) repel (especially competitors or enemies)

signal aggression or submission advertise species warn of predators communicate about the environment or the availability of food

Such signals may be:-

instinctive, that is genetically programmed learnt from others

Language

Some linguists (eg Chomsky, 1957, Macphail, 1982, both cited in Pearce, 1987) have argued that language is a unique human behaviour and that animal communication falls short of human language in a number of important ways.

Chomsky (1957) claims that humans possess an innate universal grammar that is not possessed by other species. This can be readily demonstrated, he claims, by the universality of language in human society and by the similarity of their grammars. No natural non-human system of communication shares this common grammar.

Macphail (1982, cited by Pearce, 1987) made the claim that "humans acquire language (and non-humans do not) not because humans are (quantitatively) more intelligent, but because humans possess some species-specific mechanism (or mechanisms) which is a prerequisite of language-acquisition".

Some researchers have provided lists of what they consider to be the criteria that animal communication must meet to be regarded as language.

For this lecture the list devised by Hockett (1960) is utilised, although this list is not the only such list available. Such lists tend to be quite similar and certain elements of the Hockett list are considered particularly important in evaluating the question "can animals be taught language?"

Hockett's thirteen "design-features" for language are as follows:-

1. Vocal-auditory channel: sounds emitted from the mouth and perceived by the auditory system. This applies to many animal communication systems, but there are many exceptions. Also, it does not apply to human sign language, which meets all the other 12 requirements. It also does not apply to written language.

2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception: this requires that the recipient can tell the direction that the signal comes from and thus the originator of the signal.

3. Rapid fading (transitory nature): Signal lasts a short time. This is true of all systems involving sound. It doesn't take into account audio recording technology and is also not true for written language. It tends not to apply to animal signals involving chemicals and smells which often fade slowly.

4. Interchangeability: All utterances that are understood can be produced. This is different to some communication systems where, for example, males produce one set of behaviours and females another and they are unable to interchange these messages so that males use the female signal and vice versa.

5. Total feedback: The sender of a message also perceives the message. That is, you hear what you say. This is not always true for some kinds of animal displays.

6. Specialisation: The signal produced is specialised for communication and is not the side effect of some other behaviour (eg. the panting of a dog incidentally produces the panting sound).

7. Semanticity: There is a fixed relationship between a signal and a meaning. 8. Arbitrariness: There is an arbitrary relationship between a signal and its meaning.

That is, the signal, is related to the meaning by convention or by instinct but has no inherent relationship with the meaning. This can be seen in different words in different languages referring to the same meaning, or to different calls of different sub-species of a single bird species having the same meaning.

9. Discreteness: Language can be said to be built up from discrete units (eg. phonemes in human language). Exchanging such discrete units causes a change in the meaning of a signal. This is an abrupt change, rather than a continuous change of meaning (eg. "cat" doesn't gradually change in meaning to "bat", but changes abruptly in meaning at some point. Speech loudness and pitch can, on the other hand be changed continuously without abrupt changes of meaning.

10. Displacement: Communicating about things or events that are distant in time or space. Bee dancing is an example of this.

11. Productivity: Language is an open system. We can potentially produce an infinite (2) number of different messages by combining the elements differently. This is not a feature of, for example, the calls of gibbons who have a finite number of calls and thus a closed system of communication.

12. Traditional transmission: Each generation needs to learn the system of communication from the preceding generation. Many species produce the same uniform calls regardless of where they live in the range (even a range spanning several continents). Such systems can be assumed to be defined by instinct and thus by genetics. Some animals, on the other hand fail to develop the calls of their species when raised in isolation.

13. Duality of patterning: Large numbers of meaningful signals (eg. morphemes or words) produced from a small number of meaningless units (eg. phonemes). Human language is very unusual in this respect. Apes, for example, do not share this feature in their natural communication systems.

Click here to see a table that examines the extent to which various communication systems meet these 13 design features.

Teaching Language to Apes(and other animals)

It seems well established that no animal communication system fulfils all of the criteria outlined by Hockett (1960). This is certainly true for the apes. It is also true for most other

species such as parrots and may also be true for animals such as dolphins, who have a complex communication system which involves a complex combination of various sounds.

Why try to teach a human-like language to another species?

Just because a species doesn't have such a communication system in the wild doesn't necessarily prove that they are incapable of using one.

What kind of language should we teach these animals?

We must avoid using features of human language that are physiologically difficult or impossible for the animal to manage.

For example, spoken human language is extremely difficult or impossible for most animals because of the structure of their vocal organs. Apes, for example, can't produce a large proportion of the vowels and would have difficulty with some of the consonants. This may be due not only to the shapes of the vocal organs but also to the limitations of the motor centres in the brain that control these organs. We might attempt, on the other hand, to teach apes language that involves them using their hands (eg. sign language or the manipulation of symbols).

Some birds, such as certain parrots and the Indian Hill Mynah, are able to mimic human speech with great clarity. We could, therefore, attempt to teach such animals spoken human language.

Dolphins cannot be taught either type of language but may be able to understand sounds or gestures and to respond by pressing specially designed levers.

What do we test for?

Animal communication systems generally lack one or (usually) more of the following features:-

Semanticity Arbitrariness Discreteness Displacement Productivity

Most researchers attempting to teach language to animals are attempting to test for the existence of these features in the "language" use of their subjects.

Projects with Apes

The ape species include gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo (a distinct species of chimpanzee) and the orangutan. Apart from some very early attempts to teach spoken language to

chimpanzees (generally resulting in the production of no more than 3-4 words) language production training has involved the use of the hands, either through the manipulation of symbols or through the use of sign language. Comprehension training has involved these types of language as well as training in the comprehension of spoken language.

Here are some of the most important studies on apes and language:-

Gardner and Gardner (1969)Chimpanzee (Washoe)American sign language

Patterson (1978) Gorilla (Koko)Sign language

Premack and Premack (1972)Chimpanzee (Sarah and others)Plastic symbols

Terrace et al (1979)Chimpanzee (Nim Chimpsky)Symbols

Rumbaugh and Savage-RumbaughChimpanzee (Sherman and Austin)Symbols on a keyboard

Savage-RumbaughBonobo Chimpanzee (Kanzi, Panbanisha)Understanding spoken languageSymbols on a keyboard

There are some web pages that you might wish to look at. They describe the work of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and colleagues. They include:-

Great Ape Trust , Iowa, USA A 1995 New York Times article entitled "Chimp Talk Debate: Is it really

language?", by George Johnson A British newspaper report (July, 1999) describing the use of a speech synthesiser

interfaced to the bonobos' keyboards.

Projects with Birds

Projects with birds usually involve parrots or the Indian Hill Mynah. These birds are selected for their ability to mimic human speech. The African Grey Parrot and the Indian Hill Mynah are generally considered to be the birds with the greatest ability to mimic

human speech patterns but a number of other species (mainly parrots such as the budgerigar) can be trained to "speak".

PepperbergAfrican Grey Parrot (Alex)Spoken "language"

Here are a few web pages that discuss the work of Irene Pepperberg and colleagues with Alex the African Grey Parrot.

The Alex Foundation research page (links to various papers and a short movie) "Studies to determine the intelligence of African Grey Parrots" , Irene Pepperberg,

1995

Projects with Cetaceans

Cetaceans, such as whales and dolphins, have been shown to be readily trainable to respond to gestures and sometimes to verbal and other acoustic commands. Also, many species have very complex acoustic communication systems. It has been hypothesised that it may be possible to train them to understand language encoded in either gestures or appropriate acoustic signals. Appropriate acoustic signals are assumed to be sounds that are similar to the natural communicative sounds that these animals produce. In the project listed below, one dolphin was trained on gestures and the other with sounds. (refer to chapter 8 of Pearce (1987) for a description of this project).

Herman, Richards and Wolz (1984)Dolphins (Akeakamai and Phoenix)Gestures (Akeakamai)Sounds (Phoenix)

Animal Systems of Communication(Edward Vajda)

There are about five thousand mutually unintelligible forms of language spoken on the Earth today.  Although these languages differ strikingly in their phonological, morphological and syntactic structure, each and every language serves to express a virtually unlimited variety of old and new experience. Each and every language can express any thought the human mind can devise.  In this way no human group possesses a primitive or incomplete language.  And each living language is constantly changing as speakers easily adapt it to new circumstances (cf. Navajo words for automobile parts).  Human creativity continually shapes language, and structural differences between languages do not seem to limit the thought patterns of native speakers in any fundamental or permanent way.

One way to better understand the apparently unique creative potential of human language is to contrast it with systems of communication found elsewhere in nature.  The differences between animal and human communication, as we shall see, are profound, but all the differences seem to derive from a single basic fact: Humans possess a natural, inborn facility to be creative with symbols; as far as

we know, animals do not.  (I say this not because I want to disparage animals or condone their mistreatment.  I do not. I like animals--especially cats.) I only want to say that if animals do actually think creatively, or if they have the potential to acquire human-style creative languages, this capacity is not evident in their naturally-occurring systems of communication.  And attempts to teach animals to communicate creativity with human-made symbols have so far shown little real success; occasional claims to the contrary have not been substantiated.

Let's first look at three specific systems of animal communication to examine more closely the implications of these difference between animals and humans.  Let's talk about birds, bees, and apes.

Birds have two types of sound signals--calls and songs.  Bird calls consist of one or more short notes and seem to be instinctive responses to

danger, nesting, flocking and a few other basic situations.  The English sparrow has three flight calls-- one used just before takeoff, another during flight, and one just before landing at a nesting site.  Sparrows have two types of danger calls, one to announce that a predator is nearby--like an owl in a tree-- and the other to announce that a predator is soaring overhead.  These calls seem intended to coordinate group activity in specific situations.  The meanings of these signs constitute a small, finite set which can't be increased.  And bird calls cannot be varied to produce variations of meaning. 

Bird songs are used primarily by males to attract mates or establish territory.  Bird songs are limited to these and only these functions.  Although bird songs are longer than bird calls, their internal elements aren't separable into meaningful units and cannot be rearranged to produce new songs.

Interestingly, although bird songs are inborn, and young birds naturally begin producing them at a certain age even if raised away from their species, the fledgling bird must experience adult songs to reproduce the song perfectly. If the fledgling is deprived of this input it will grow up to produce the song naturally anyway, but with marked imperfections. [This is radically different from how human children acquire and use words. Children will not naturally develop the word "apple" unless they hear it first and then repeat it; they will not, without ever hearing it, naturally develop a degraded version of the word "apple" or of any other word.)  The specific words of human languages are acquired through exposure and are definitely not inborn.]

Let's turn to what is in some ways a more complex system of communication.  The honeybee system of communication consist of dances performed on the wall of the hive.  In the 1960's Karl von Frisch discovered that the Italian honeybee performs three types of dances on the wall of the hive to communicate to other bees the source of nectar. 

1) The round dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar is within 20 feet of the hive;  the richness of the source is indicated by intensity of movement and by the number of repetition; direction from the hive is not indicated.

2) The sickle dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar is within 20-60 feet from the hive; again, the richness of the source is indicated by intensity of movement;  the angle with respect to gravity denotes the direction in relation to the sun.

3) The tail-wagging dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar is beyond 60 feet from the hive (80 feet in the Austrian honeybee). It imparts all the information of the sickle dance plus indicates the precise distance by the number of repetitions per minute--the slower the repetition the farther the distance. 

The bees system of communication is capable of yielding an infinite number of different messages, like human language.  But unlike human language, bee communication is confined to a single subject: the location of nectar with respect to the hive.  Bees can only report the location of nectar recently detected;  they cannot reminisce about a wonderful source of nectar found last week or convey parental worries about the work habits of younger generations of bees; they cannot predict nectar sources.  Nor can bees vary their message to convey additional information which is crucial for finding nectar, such as hardships discovered en route to a source of nectar.  In an experiment, one bee was tricked by being made to walk in a tube 25 feet to a particularly rich source of nectar; when she returned to the hive, this bee performed the tail-wagging dance, expressing that the honey was hundreds of feet from the hive--which would have been correct if the bee had spent the same amount of time flying to the source instead of walking there. 

Novice bees returning from their first nectar foray instinctively know how to perform the dance--just like a newborn baby instinctively knows how to cry and later instinctively develops the smile reflex. The bees' dance is basically an instinct-driven response to an external stimuli-- like our laughter, sneezes, or tears but unlike our words.  

What about ape communication? Many people think that primates are at a level of development only a few steps below that of humans.  In some parts of Indonesia people believe that apes don't speak because they know that if they did humans would put them to work. As it turns out, ape communication is no closer to human language than the systems of bees and birds--it is a strictly limited, non-creative system.

First of all, the social context of primate communication in the wild is completely different than for humans.     

a) Among apes communication generally takes place within a single social group composed of members of both sexes and of disparate ages, who have spent most or all of their lives together.  Attempts at communication between complete strangers is very rare. 

b) Primates, as a rule, have very good eyesight and much of their communication is accomplished in gestures or body language.  To show dominance, a primate has a relaxed posture and walks with a sort of swagger.  The timid primate, by contrast, is tense and walks with its back arched as if to spring away at any moment. 

c) The meaning of gestures differs from species to species, even slightly from group to group among the same species.  Monkeys use a grimace to signal aggression and hostility, while chimpanzees bare their teeth as a form of greeting or reassurance.  One species of primates raised within the community of another species will come to comprehend the other primate's signals but will only produce the signals of its own species.  This seems to indicate that primate communication systems, like those of bees and birds, are largely instinctive rather than learned. 

Let's generalize the similarities and differences between human and animal communication? 

Similarity.   All systems of communication contain signs, units of form with specific meaning (words).  Human languages contain sound symbols called words; animal systems use more varied formal media, but each form is a sign conveying definite meaning.

a) Foxes have a system of 20 vocalizations. b) Electric eels have a system of electric pulse signals c) Spiders have an elaborate system of courtship gestures.  d) Scents and smells serve as signals for many other species.  Differences. For animals, the form of the signal may be visual, auditory, olfactory,

but each animal system differs entirely from all human languages in six key ways. 1) The signs of animal systems are inborn.  Birds, apes and bees naturally and

instinctively develop their species' signals, even if raised in captivity and away from adults of their own species.  Humans must acquire language through exposure to a speech community (cf. example of children picking up obscenities vs. a child getting a new tooth).  A Korean child adopted and raised in America won't spontaneously develop Korean words or sentences in an all-English speaking environment--or naturally develop a degraded form of Korean. The words of human languages are definitely not inborn.  Rather, it seems that it is the capacity to acquire creative language which is innate to humans. (Linguist Noam Chomsky calls this still mysterious capacity the LAD, or language acquisition device.) The actual form of any particular language is definitely not inborn and must be acquired through prolonged exposure.  No linguist disputes the fact that a child of any ethnic origin can learn any language flawlessly if raised in a community where that language is spoken. In acquiring a human language, exposure to a speech community is all important; racial or ethnic origin in themselves are completely unimportant.

2) Animal systems are set responses to stimuli.  Animal communication is here and now--used to express something more or less immediately present in space and time.  In other words, the signs of animal communication are used as indexes. As far as we know, animals can't communicate about yesterday, about what might be or what wasn't.  In this way animal communication systems are not unlike the repertoire of sounds of a 12 month old infant, who has a way of conveying interest in something immediately present, or conveying emotional responses such as discontent, loneliness, and a few other basic states of being. 

Human language is not purely a reflex triggered automatically by external stimuli or internal emotional states.  Human language can be used as an index, just like animal communication, but it may also exhibit what has been termed displacement. Humans can not only talk about things that are absent but also about things that have never been.  Humans can invent myths and tell lies.  Human language can be used arbitrarily, with the stimulus deep within the speaker's psyche and the topic not present or even non-existent.  Animal languages can only be used as a means of pointing to something directly present in time and space.

3) In animal systems, each signal has one and only one function.  More than one sign cannot share the same meaning.  For example, gorillas in the wild have three types of signals which express danger, presence of food, and desire for sex.  The gibbon system of communication consists of three signals: a signal for danger on the ground, another for danger in a tree, and another for danger in the air; these

three do not overlap in meaning and each meaning can only be expressed by that one sign.

In contrast the signs in human language usually have more than one meaning; and each meaning can be expressed by more than one sign (example with the word eye).

4) Animal signals are not naturally used in novel ways.  Animal systems are essentially non-creative.  They cannot be used metaphorically or figuratively.  As far as we know, animals can't lie or invent myths.

Human language is creative and can be used in novel ways . Two-year old children can produce novel utterances they have never heard before (*sheeps, *Daddy gived the book).  By three, children regularly produce sentences they have never heard before and regularly use words in new, creative ways.  Messages can be sent that have never been heard before by the sender or by anyone else.  Human languages are infinitely creative in that a potentially limitless number of messages can be sent. 

Unlike animals, humans can lie, they can use language to distort or extend the world around them.  Animal communication is based on a limited inventory of signs.  If you learn the set of signals and their meaning then you know the system completely; there is no creativity for extending it further.  This is not the case with human language.  If you were to learn the entire set of words in any human language, you would still not know the language. 

5) Because they are non-creative, animal systems are closed inventories of signs used to express a few specific messages only.  Honeybees, for instance, can communicate only about the location of a source of nectar. As far as we know, bees do not communicate about the weather or the beauty of nature, or gossip about other bees in the hive. 

Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity . Besides containing word symbols, human languages are based a system of patterns, or rules, called grammar.

Grammar can be defined as patterns with function but no specific meaning: phonology (new sound combinations), morphology (new words), syntax (new sentences). It is the grammar that allows language signs to be used with virtually endless creatively.

Animal systems is limited to a strictly defined, finite range of possible messages--there is never anything new because there is no abstract level similar to human grammar. 

6) Because they are non-creative, animal systems seem not to change from generation to generation.  Actually, they change extremely slowly, over periods of many thousands of years, but as a result of genetic drift rather than conscious innovation.  (Compare the dialects of the American redwing blackbird, and the dialects of the European honeybee).

Because it is a vehicle for creativity, human language is very changeable . Human language often changes quickly from generation to generation.  If you read Shakespeare, who wrote in the 16th century, you will note that the use and meaning of many words has changed.  If you were to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written a few centuries earlier, you would need to consult a dictionary of Middle English to get through the text.  And if you tried to read Beowulf in the original, you would understand almost nothing; even a dictionary wouldn't be enough to get

you through the text.  The English spoken 1000 years ago would seem a completely foreign language, at least as unintelligible to you as German or Icelandic. And roughly 7000 years ago, the ancestors of such different languages as English, Italian, and Russian were simply dialects of the one and the same language.  And 40,000 years ago it is possible that the ancestral forms of such disparate languages as Basque, Navajo, and Chinese may have been dialects of the same language. 

Animal languages also change, but they change with the slowness of genetic drift. The minute differences between the dialects of the European honeybee language, by contrast took perhaps 100,000 years to develop.  Human language changes more than that even during the lifetime of each individual speaker (cf.: computer terminology; such terms as "to impact," "to pig out"; also the changing pronunciation of wh). Human language is constantly in flux; animal systems are extremely stable.

What conclusions can we draw about naturally occurring animal communication?  We can say that the signs of animal communication are more like inborn and involuntary human reactions such as laughter, crying, and sneezing than they are like human language.  As far as we know humans have always had laughter and tears as natural inborn responses--children develop them naturally and they don't change from generation to generation--although, even here, humans can use these responses deliberately and creatively, or suppress their naturally-felt urges to express them.

TEACHING ANIMALS CREATIVE LANGUAGE.  Animals clearly do not have creative communication which could be called true language.  But can animals be taught to use creative human-style languages?  This question is still debated by linguists and natural scientists--but the answer is probably no.  Let's look at some of the evidence for and against the presence of latent creative linguistic ability in animals.

Some birds have an almost uncanny capacity for mimicry.  Mockingbirds imitate the songs of other birds.  Parrots and mynah birds can render perfect imitations of the human voice.  This shows that the difference between human and animal languages is not due merely to the specific structure of the human speech organs which animals lack.  Mynah bird can repeat "dad" and "bad" but cannot produce a novel utterance "dab" by creatively rearranging the elements in the former two words.  In order to produce "dab" the parrot would have to hear it and respond to it as a stimulus.  A two-year old child, by contrast, can invent new utterances based on the elements of the ones he has already heard.  A parrot, on the other hand, can repeat "cat" and "cats", "dog" and "dogs", but if it hears the word "parrot" it will not be able to produce the form "parrots" by analogy.  (There is a report of an African gray parrot in Chicago who can form plurals creatively, and says "Hello" and "Good-bye" at the appropriate time. This seems to be a highly unusual instance if it is true.)

Let's compare how children naturally form plurals of nouns creatively.  One child psychologist performed experiment with three-year old children: showed a picture and called it a wug, then showed several of them.  The children all produced the plural "wugs". 

This experiment seems to prove that the difference between human and animal languages is in the brain rather than due to the specific structure of the speech

organs.  If bird calls were put to use by humans they could be used creatively and would cease being set responses to certain stimuli only.  On the contrary, if human signs are used by parrots, they seem to be used as single isolated responses to things present at the moment. In other words, they are indexes (indices) used telegraphically.

What about apes?  Can humans teach apes to use language creatively?  Unlike certain birds, apes clearly lack the vocal cord apparatus necessary to imitate the actual sounds of human speech. This is irrelevant, though, since the true language organ is the brain. Is there a latent language capacity in the brains of our closest evolutionary cousins?  Once again, scientists disagree, although experimentation so far suggests that apes have only very minor amounts of ability to be creative with human-taught symbols. 

a) In an experiment, two linguists from Berkeley, Beatrice and Allen Gartner tried to teach a female chimp Washou to communicate using colored blocks.  By the age of 6 Washou had learned 100 signs but couldn't put them together in novel ways or use them in the absence of the given stimulus. In other words, each symbol was used as an index. 

b) Certain other experiments however, seem to indicate, that apes, given extensive teaching and training by skilled scientists, evince a limited capacity to be creative with symbols. (One ape supposedly signed that a bagel was a "rock bracelet".) However, apes seem incapable of acquiring a true grammar--a set of functional patterns that can express unlimited meaning.

Human children, by contrast, learn language without being deliberately taught by anyone at all.  Even severely retarded children acquire language spontaneously from adults without any special teaching.  Thus we must conclude that animals--even the most clever apes, and, yes, even cats, lack the cognitive mental apparatus to be infinitely creative with communicative symbols.  Humans--all humans--are distinguished from all other species by an innate capacity acquire grammar and create language. 

And yet, linguists and psychologists still do not understand precisely what this human language learning apparatus is.  The question remains a subject of intense scientific scrutiny and debate.  One aspect of that debate is--if humans evolved from apes--then how could creative human language have evolved from stimulus and response systems like those found in modern primates.  Tomorrow we will discus theories on the origin of human language.

The difference between animal and human communication

Difference between animal and human communication

Introduction

Language is an invaluable possession of the human race. Man is clearly distinguished from other species by his capacity of using language. Human beings have an organized form of languages. There are innumerable languages exist around the world. Animals also

communicate in one or the other way. This communication method or language is not organized as human language and entirely different from human communication method, biologically and culturally.

Human Language

Language is the most effective method of human communication. The term language is derived from the Latin word lingua meaning tongue. Human language is in organized form. It is an open entity, new words or meanings may come into use. Language is as important as breathing. Barnett says, “Verbal communication is a condition of the existence of human society.”

Language helps man in several ways. It enables him to reach back into collective knowledge of his ancestors. It is through language that human beings collect and preserve knowledge and transfer it to the next generation. Most of the linguists disclose the fact that human language has different types of realizations such as written form, spoken form. Human language has signifier and signified.

Animal communication

Animals also can communicate. Some animals and birds like dog, dolphins, gibbons, herring gulls and honey bees have developed their own system of communication. But their communication system differs from human communication. Animal communication lacks flexibility and creativity. Their communication tradition is acquired genetically and not through learning.

Human language has got certain properties which makes it unique and different from animal communication system. These properties are duality, creativity, displacement, arbitrariness, interchangeability etc.

The main differences between animal and human communications.

The primary difference between human communication and animal communication is the duality of structure of human language. Each human language has got a fixed number of sound units called phonemes. These phonemes are combined to make morphemes. Thus language has got two levels of patterning which is not prevailed in animal communication.

Yet another distinctive feature of human communication is creativity. Human beings use their linguistic resources to produce new expressions and new sentences. They arrange and rearrange phonemes, morphemes, words and phrases to create new modes of expression. This is also called open- endedness of language. Animal communication is closed system they cannot produce new vocal signals to communicate novel events or experience.

Human beings can talk of real or imaginary situations, places and objects far removed from their present surroundings and time. Human language is context free whereas animal

communication mostly context bound. Animal communication is merely a response to stimulus in the immediate environment like the presence of food or danger.

Human language is interchangeable. Both sexes of human beings can use the same language interchangeably. But certain communications in animal world are performed only by one sex of that sect. Bee dancing is performed by worker bees.

The important disparity is human language is culturally transmitted. Thus human beings brought up in different culture acquire different languages also by the influence of other culture man can learn other languages in course of time. But animals lack in this capacity. Their communication ability is transmitted biologically so they are unable to acquire other languages.

Human language is a symbolic system. Hence human language is not only uttered but also can be displayed by writing with the help of certain symbols called alphabets of that language. Animal communication fails to disclose in this manner. Hence ideas or main events of any time cannot be preserved for the future generation of that sect.

Biological differences also play a vital role in communication. Human vocal cords can produce a large number of sounds. Each human language makes its own selection of sounds for it use. Animal and birds have an entirely different biological structure with regard to the formation of sounds.

Conclusion

Human language is entirely different from animal communication. Human language has many properties which makes it different from animal communication. Human language has alphabets which help man to write down and preserve ideas for coming generations. Animal communication is context bound, they cannot communicate any experience of past. Animal communication is biologically transmitted thus it cannot learn any other languages. Some birds like parrot may imitate human utterances but it reiterate the words without knowing meaning also fails to learn more words. If they try to learn new utterance the older ones get erased. Whereas human beings can imitate the sounds of animals and make them respond to the sounds easily. Hence human communication or human language is a unique one which is the sole property of him.

Bibliography

1 Kuriakose,K.P, An Introduction to Linguistics,2002,Gayatrhri Publishers,7-11

2 Hockett F Charles, A Course in Modern Linguistic,1970,The Macmillan Company,570-580