UNIT THREE

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION
AND HUMAN LANGUAGE

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Do you think animals have their own languages?
2. W hat are the differences and similarities between human language and animal ‘ language’ ?
3. Can animals learn human language?
4. How many kinds of communicative systems?

SUGGESTED READINGS:
Language and Its Structure, p.16 – 20
An Introduction to Language. p.18 - 21
Language, Its Structure and Use. p 469- 473

LINGUISTIC TERMS
Utterance: an expression produced in a particular context with a particular intention.
Dialect: a language variety used by and characteristic of a particular social group; for example,
dialects can be characteristic of regional, ethnic, socioeconomic, or gender groups.
Pitch: the fundamental frequency as perceived by the listener.
Sign: (1) (in traditional linguistics) A form arbitrarily related to a meaning, that is, a word. (2) A
single gesture (possibly with complex meaning) in the sign languages used by the deaf
equivalent to the ‘ word’ in spoken languages.
Sign languages: the languages used by the deaf in which hand and body gestures are the forms
of morphemes and words.
Repertoire, linguistic repertoire: the set of language varieties (including registers and dialects)
used in the speaking and writing practices of a speech community; also called verbal repertoire.
Arbitrary relating to that property of language, including sign language, whereby there is no
natural or intrinsic relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed), and its
meaning (e.g. the sounds represented by casa in Spanish, house in English, dom in Russian, etc.
have the same meaning).

BASIC IDEAS
Organizational schemes:

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Systems of animal communication invariably reflect one of two organizational schemes. U nder
one scheme, signals vary continuously along one or a small number of dimensions. B ees, for
instance, are able to communicate to one another with great precision the location of a food
source by means of a dance done in the hive. Human language has aspects similar to this, but
they are rather peripheral. A parallel case would be the spectrum of our verbal responses to
pain.

Human languages are unlimited in a much more interesting sense than this. I f you try to write
down all the sentences of English, or of any other language, you will quickly come to realize the
futility of the task. I n this way human languages differ from systems of animal communication
displaying the second type of organizational scheme, which calls for a small, finite number of
discrete signals.

U nlimited Set Of Discrete Signals:

Human language is thus crucially different from both varieties of animal communication. A
human speaker controls an unlimited set of discrete signals; animal communication systems
involve either a limited set of discrete signals or a continuum of non- discrete signals along j ust a
few dimensions.

Structural Complexity Of T he Signals:

T he most glaring difference lies in the great structural complexity of the signals of a human
language. Every sentence of a human language displays structure on at least two levels. F irst, it
consists of a linear string of words, each of which has a more or less definite individual meaning
and each of which consists of a sequence of sounds drawn from the small inventory of sounds
used systematically in the language. Second, every sentence has a complex grammatical
structure.

L earning:
Another difference is that learning is much more important as a factor in human language than
in animal communication. Human languages have ' very much in common, but they differ from
one another on many specific points. Regardless of how much of human language is innate, the
learning task is considerable. T he communicative dance of bees, by way of contrast, must be
innately specified virtually in its entirety.

Open- ended

F inally, we may observe that animal communication systems are closed, whereas human
languages are open- ended. As long as bees communicate, they will only be able to exchange
variants of the same message— in what direction the nectar is and how far away. P eople, on the
other. hand, can talk about anything they can observe or imagine.

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F rom the observations, it seems to follow that there is no reason to posit any significant
relation between the communication systems of humans and other animals. T hey are similar
only in that they allow for the transmission of information according to fixed principles, and this
similarity is dwarfed by the differences.

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READI N G 1
F romkin, V ictoria et al. An Introduction to Language. Harcourt B race College P ublishers. 19 9 3.
P ages 18 - 21

AN I MAL ‘ L AN G U AG ES’
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark he cannot tell you that his parents were poor
but honest.

BERTRAND RUSSELL.
W hether language is the exclusive property of the human species is an interesting question.
T he idea of talking animals probably is as old and as widespread among human societies as
language is itself. N o culture lacks a legend in which some animal plays a speaking role. All over
W est Africa, children listen to folk tales in which a ' spider- man' is the hero. ‘ Coyote’ is a favorite
figure in many N ative American tales, and there is hardly an animal who does not figure in
Aesop' s famous fables. Hugh L ofting' s fictional Doctor Doolittle' s maj or accomplishment was his
ability to communicate with animals.

I f language is viewed only as a system of communication, then many species communicate.

Humans also use systems other than their language to relate to each other and to send
' messages' . T he question is whether the kinds of grammars which represent linguistic
knowledge acquired by children with no external instruction, and which are used creatively
rather than as responses to internal or external stimuli, are unique to the human animal.
‘Talking’ parrots

Most humans who acquire language use speech sounds to express meanings, but such sounds
are not a necessary aspect of language, as evidenced by the sign languages of the deaf. T he use
of speech sounds is therefore not a basic part of what we have been calling language. T he
chirping of birds, the squeaking of dolphins, and the dancing of bees may potentially represent
systems similar to human languages. I f animal communication systems are not like human
language, it will not be due to a lack of speech.

Conversely, when animals vocally imitate human utterances, it does not mean they possess
language. L anguage is a system that relates sounds (or gestures) to meanings. ' T alking' birds
such as parrots and myna birds are capable of faithfully reproducing words and phrases of
human language that they have heard; but when a parrot says ' P olly wants a cracker' , she may
really, want a ham sandwich or a drink of water or nothing at all. A bird that has learned to say
' hello' or ' goodbye' is as likely to use one as the other, regardless of whether people are arriving
or departing. T he bird' s utterances carry no meaning. T hey are speaking neither English nor
their own language when they sound like us.

T alking birds do not dissect the sounds of their imitations into discrete units. Polly and Molly do
not rhyme for a parrot. T hey are as different as hello and goodbye (or as similar). One property
of all human languages (which will be discussed further in chapter 5 ) is the ' discrete- ness' of the
speech or gestural units, which are ordered and reordered, combined and split apart. A parrot
says what it is taught, or what it hears, and no more. I f P olly learns ' P olly wants a cracker' and

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' P olly wants a doughnut' and also learns to imitate the single words whisky and. focaccia, she
will not spontaneously produce, as children do, ' P olly wants whisky’ or ' P olly wants focaccia' or
' P olly wants whisky and focaccia' . I f she learns cat and cats and dog and dogs and then learns
the word parrot, she will be unable to form the plural parrots; nor can a parrot form an unlim-
ited set of utterances from a finite set of units. T herefore, the ability to produce sounds similar
to those used in human language cannot be equated with the ability to learn a human
language.

The birds and the bees

The birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there are no disputes about
anything. They all talk, and they all talk to me, but it must be a foreign language for I
cannot make out a word they say. MARK T W AI N , Eve's diary.

Most animals possess some kind of ' signaling' communication system. Among the spiders there
is a complex system for courtship. T he male spider, before he approaches his lady love, goes
through an elaborate series of gestures to inform her that he is indeed a spider and not a
crumb or a fly to be eaten. T hese gestures are invariant. One never finds a ' creative’ spider
changing or adding to the particular courtship ritual of his species.

A similar kind of ' gesture' language is found among the fiddler crabs. T here are forty different
varieties, and each variety uses its own particular claw- waving movement to signal to another
member of its ' clan' . T he timing, movement, and posture of the body never change from one
time to another or from one crab to another within the particular variety. W hatever the signal
means, it is fixed. Only one meaning can be conveyed. T here is not an infinite set of fiddler crab
' sentences' .

T he imitative sounds of talking birds have little in common with human language, but the calls
and songs of many species of birds do have a communicative function, and they resemble
human languages in that there may be ‘ dialects’ within the same species. B ird calls (consisting
of one or more short notes) convey messages associated with the immediate environment,
such as danger, feeding, nesting, flocking, and so on. B ird songs (more complex patterns of
notes) are used to ' stake out' territory and to attract mates. T here is no evidence of any internal
structure to these songs, nor can they be segmented into independently meaningful parts as
words of human language can be. I n a study of the territorial song of the European robin
(B usnel & B remond, 19 6 2), it was discovered that the rival robins paid attention only to the
alternation between high- pitched and low- pitched notes, and which came first did not matter.
T he message varies only to the extent of how strongly the robin feels about his possession and
to what extent he is prepared to defend it and start a family in that territory. T he different
alternations therefore express ' intensity' and nothing more. T he robin is creative in his ability to
sing the same thing in many different ways, but not creative in his ability to use the same ' units'
of the system to express many different messages with different meanings.

T o what degree human language is biologically conditioned (or innate) and to what degree it is
learned is one of the fundamental questions of linguistics. T he songs of some species of birds
appear to be innate.

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Despite certain superficial similarities to human language, bird calls and songs are
fundamentally different kinds of communicative systems. T he number of messages that can be
conveyed is finite, and messages are stimulus- controlled.

T his distinction is also true of the system of communication used by honeybees. A forager bee
is able to return to the hive and tell other bees where a source of food is located. I t does so by
performing a dance on a wall of the hive that reveals the location and quality of the food
source. F or one species of I talian honeybee, the dancing behavior may assume one of three
possible patterns: round (which indicates locations near the hive, within six or seven meters),
sickle (which indicates locations at seven to twenty meters distance from the hive), and tail-
wagging (for distances that exceed twenty meters). T he number of repetitions per minute of
the basic pattern in the tail- wagging dance indicates the precise distance; the slower the
repetition rate, the longer the distance.

T he bees' dance is an effective system of communication for bees. I t is capable, in principle, of

infinitely many different messages, like human language; but unlike human language, the
system is confined to a single subj ect — distance from the hive. T he inflexibility was shown by
an experimenter who forced a bee to walk to the food source. W hen the bee returned to the
hive, it indicated a distance twenty- five times farther away than the food source actually was.
T he bee had no way of communicating the special circumstances in its message. T his absence
of creativity makes the bees’ dance qualitatively different from human language.

I n the seventeenth century, the philosopher and mathematician Rene’ Descartes pointed out
that the communication systems of animals are qualitatively different from the language used
by humans:

It is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting
idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together, forming of them a statement by
which they make known their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other animal,
however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same.

The philosophical words of Descartes, trans. E. S. HAL DAN E & G . R. T . Ross, V ol. 1, 19 7 3, p.
116 .

Descartes goes on to state that one of the maj or differences between humans and animals is
that human use of language is not j ust a response to external, or even internal, emotional
stimuli, as are the sounds and gestures of animals. He warns against confusing human use of
language with ' natural movements which betray passions and may be... manifested by animals' .

T o hold that animals communicate by systems qualitatively different from human language
systems is not to claim human superiority. Humans are not inferior to the one- celled amoeba
because they cannot reproduce by splitting in two; they are j ust different sexually. All the
studies of animal communication systems, including those of chimpanzees, provide evidence
for Descartes' distinction between other animal communication systems and the linguistic
creative ability possessed by the human animal.

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READI N G 2
F inegan, Edward. Language its Structure and Use. Harcourt B race College P ublishers. 19 8 1.
P ages 46 9 - 47 3

W hen we observe animals in groups, it doesn' t take long to realize that they too interact: Dogs
display their fangs to communicate displeasure or aggression: bees appear to tell each other
where they have found flowers; male frogs croak in order to attract female frogs. I t is only
natural to ask. How do the forms of communication used by animals differ from human
language?

P eople sometimes speak of porpoises, chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins, whales, bees and other
animals as though they had language systems similar to those of humans. Almost any week
television programs show people trying to communicate through music with apes, alligators, or
turkeys (turkeys gobble when a particular note is played on a wind instrument). T here is no
doubt that most, and presumably all species of animals have developed systems of
communication with which they can signal such things as danger and fear, hunger and the
whereabouts of food, rutting instincts and sexual access. W e now know a good deal about
what, why, and how bees communicate. More recently, chimpanzees, with their extremely
limited vocal apparatus, have been raised as human infants and taught sign language so as to
skirt the difficulties or impossibility of their vocalizing.

P eople had wondered for a long time how bees were able to communicate to one another the
exact location of a nectar source, and there was speculation about a "language" that bees must
possess. After years of careful observation and hypothesizing, K arl von F risch claimed that
honeybees have an elaborate system of dancing by which they communicate the whereabouts
of a honey supply. V arious aspects of the dance of a bee returning to a hive indicate the
distance and the direction of a nectar source. T he quality of the source can be gauged by
sniffing the discovering bee. Although some of his interpretations have been questioned, von
F risch' s careful analysis demonstrated that the kind of creativity characteristic of a child' s
speech is lacking in the bee' s dance. B ees do not use their communicative system to convey
anything beyond a limited range of meanings (such as ' T here is a pretty good source of nectar
in this direction' ). Analogies between bee dancing and child language are therefore farfetched
and misleading.

T he same lack of creativity characterizes the communication that takes place between other
animals. B eyond a limited repertoire of meanings, even intelligent mammals like dogs do not
have the mental capacity to be communicatively creative.

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F urthermore, much of the communication that occurs between animals relies on signs rather
than symbols. W hen gazelles sense potential danger, they flee and thereby signal to other
gazelles in the vicinity that danger is lurking. T he communicative function of the act is incidental
to its more pressing survival function. Similarly, a dog signals the possibility that it might bite
momentarily by displaying its fangs. T hese acts are not arbitrary symbols; rather, they are signs
that accompany desires and possibilities.

V ocalizations that might be construed as symbols of various sorts in different animals are
usually accompanied by gestures. One study found that only 3 percent of the signals among
rhesus monkeys were not accompanied by gestures. W hatever animals express through sounds
seems to reflect not a logical sequence of thoughts but a sequence accompanying a series of
emotional states. Animals' communicative activities thus differ from human language in that
they consist essentially of signs, not arbitrary symbols.

CHECKING YOUR UNDERSTANDING

1. Which one is not an example of Animals’ visual communication?

a. Fireflies glow to attract mates.
b. Peacocks use their elaborate talks during courting rituals.
c. Cobras inflate their hood to scare other creatures.
d. Cats rub against objects to mark them with their scent.

2. Which of the following items is/are not true about animal communication?
a. Bees, for instance, are able to communicate to one another with great
precision the location of a food source by means of a dance done in the hive.
b. As long as bees communicate, they will only be able to exchange variants of
the same message—in what direction the nectar is and how far away.
c. One property of animal communication is the 'discreteness' of the speech or
gestural units, which are ordered and reordered, combined and split apart.
d. The bees' dance is an effective system of communication for bees and is
capable, in principle, of infinitely many different messages, like human language

3. Suppose you taught a dog to heel, sit up, beg, roll over, play dead, stay, jump, and bark on
command, using the italicized words as cues. W ould you be teaching it languages? W hy or
why not?

4. T he following table shows the differences between human and animal communication.
F rom what you have observed or read, fill in the blank boxes with Y ES or N O and some
explanations.

Human vs. Animal Communication

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Characteristics Animal Communication Human Gestures Human Language
Y ES Y ES
Symbolic
(but usually no) (sometimes no)

Partly innate, partly

learned

Y ES
Specific context or
stimulus required

N O
Finite repertoire of (we can say anything
messages we want about
anything)
SORT OF
Discrete unites can be (but this is very
combined to produce limited; all gestures
infinite number of have meaning, as
messages: opposed to units of
combinatorial language)

Rules for combination

of units based on
hierarchical structure
New symbols can be
created or borrowed

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UNIT FOUR
LINGUISTICS AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC STUDY
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
W hy should we study language?
W hat is linguistics?
W hat are the branches of linguistics?
How has language study changed through times?

SUGGESTED READINGS:
Language and Its Structure, p. 7 – 11
An Introduction to Language. p.11-15
Language, Its Structure and Use. p 13- 15

LINGUISTIC TERMS
Grammar: (1) the system of a language, including its phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,
and lexicon. (2) the linguistic knowledge of a speaker of a language.
Descriptive grammar: a grammar which describes how a language is actually spoken and/ or
written, and does not state or prescribe how it ought to be spoken or written.
Prescriptive grammar: a grammar which states rules for what is considered the best or most
correct usage. P rescriptive grammar is often based not on descriptions of actual usage but rather
on the grammarian’ s views of what is best.
Linguistics: the study of human language.
Historical linguistics: the branch of linguistics that deals with how languages change, what
kinds of changes occur, and why they occur.
Comparative linguistics: the study of different languages and their respective linguistic
systems.
Anthropological linguistics: the investigation of languages as part of the investigation of their
associated cultures.
Applied linguistics: an area of enquiry which seeks to establish the relevance of theoretical
studies of language to everyday problems in which language is implicated.
Psycho-linguistics: the study of language and mind: the mental structures and processes which
are involved in the acquisition and use of language.
Sociolinguistics: the study of language and society: how social factors influence the structure
and use of language.

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