Human vs Animal(Language)

Week 3

Do animals have language?

What are you talking about?

Do you understand my words?

The cases

• Ramu• Viki, Nim, and Sarah

The cases of Ramu

• Ramu was a young boy who appeared to have been reared by wolves. He was discovered in India in 1960. At the time of his death, aged about 10, he had still not learned to speak. ( Harley, 2001: 73)

The cases of Viki and Friends

• Treating to use human language

The case of Genie

• Treating not to be in human communication situation

Properties of human language (reflexivity)

• We can use the language to think and to talk about language itself.

• Every human being who speaks a language knows its grammar

Displacement

• Human can refer to past and future time. • It allows language user to talk about things

and places (e.g superman, heaven, hell, etc.) whose existence we cannot even be sure of.

Arbitrariness

• The relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the words.

Productivity

• Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations.

Cultural transmission

• Language acquired in a culture is with other speakers, not from parental genes.

Duality

• Sound and meaning (Capability of making very large number of sound combinations which are distinct meaning.)

Animal language characteristics• The signs of animal systems are inborn. Animal systems

are set responses to stimuli. • In animal systems, each signal has one and only one

function. • Animal signals are not naturally used in novel ways. • Animal systems are essentially non-creative. Because they

are non-creative, animal systems are closed inventories of signs used to express a few specific messages only.

• Animal systems seem not to change from generation to generation .