Animal communication

Is language species-specific? How many features, and in what measure of sophistication, does a
particular type of communication have to have to qualify as humanlike in kind, even if not in degree?
Animal communication may appear to us to be rudimentary, but we do not know how much of its
potential is actually realized. We can imagine the possibility of linguistic sophistication among animals,
of course.

A way of enquiring into whether language is species-specific or not is to try and get another species to
learn it. The assumption here is that there might be some linguistic capability within animals which has
simply not been activated by natural requirement. Instead of observing behavior, we need to elicit it.
The argument is that if such animals can be induced to acquire language, it cannot in essence be
specific to the human species.

Since the nonhuman primates, especially the chimpanzees, are our closest evolutionary kin, they
have been taken as the most suitable subjects for treatment. It was recognized that these primates
are not physiologically equipped with the kind of vocal organs suited to human speech, so that if they
were to learn language it would have to be in dissociation from speech, through a different medium.

The results of all these efforts with chimpanzees, however, have been unconvincing. Part of the
reason for this is the disparity between the very efforts themselves and the relatively modest returns
by way of learning. Human children appear to acquire language with impressive ease, and without the
intensive and directed regime of instruction which the chimpanzees were subjected to. The fact that
so much effort was needed to induce even rudimentary linguistic behavior might itself be taken as
indicative that the subjects lacked the capacity to learn. Human language provides abundant evidence
that it is natural for humans to infer abstract categories from actual occurrences, to go beyond
the immediate context, and indeed, as duality shows, to create a level of structure which is
exclusively concerned with forms without meaning. If animals do indeed have a similar capacity
for language as human beings, why have they never bothered to exploit it? If they were to learn
language it would have to be through some other medium. But then not only are the conditions for
learning unnatural, but what they are learning ceases to be natural language.

For all we know (at present at least) they might have a highly complex and subtle signalling system, a
language comparable to ours, but exploiting visual and aural elements which do not count as
significant to us.

Human language: endowment or accomplishment?

To return, then, to the question we started with: is language species-specific, unique to humans? The
answer is that if 'language' is defined as 'human language' and significance assigned to particular
design features accordingly, then it is bound to be species-specific, by definition. But now another and
more difficult issue arises. If language is uniquely human, does it mean that it is something we are
born with, part of our genetic make-up, an innate endowment?

For it is of course quite possible to argue that something is peculiar to humankind and so is
generically unique, without accepting that it is part of our biological make-up, that is to say, genetically
unique. Thus, we might note that we seem to be the only creatures that take it into their heads to wear
clothes or cook food, but no one, I imagine, is likely to argue that we are genetically predisposed to
clothes or cooked food.
The argument for the genetic uniqueness of language is that it provides an explanation for a number
of facts which would otherwise be inexplicable. One of these is the ease with which children learn
their own language. They rapidly acquire a complex grammar which goes well beyond imitation of any
utterances they might hear.

First of all, how we acquire language is not, or at least not only, a matter of accumulation but also of
regulation. So the question that we need to answer is from where does this capability for regulation
come from? And the answer comes from what my team mates have been saying and that is that it
must have been there to begin with; that there must exist some kind of innate, genetically
programmed Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which directs the process whereby children infer
rules from the language data they are exposed to.

The LAD provides a closed set of common principles of grammatical organization, or Universal
Grammar (UG), which depends on the language the child is actually exposed to in its environment.
According to Chomsky, these principles that are given by the LAD define a number of general
parameters of language which are given different settings by particular languages. The parameters
are innate, predetermined, part of the genetic make-up of human beings. The settings are the result of
varying environmental conditions. This being so, in respect to parameters, all languages are alike; in
respect to settings, they are all different as the conditions that the child is exposed to play a particular
role. In acquisition, children do not need to induce the particular rules of their own language from
scratch, and only on the basis of the language data they hear. What they do is to use the data to set
the parameters which they are already innately provided with. It is as if they came equipped for
reception with all the wavelengths in place and all they need to do is tune in.

What is different, and controversial, about this theory of innate universals is Chomsky's claim that we
are equipped with a specifically linguistic programme which is unique to the species, and different in
kind from any other capability. It follows from this view that language learning is not explicable as one
among many aspects of general intellectual development, but only as the activation of a distinct
language acquisition device and the growth of a kind of separate mental organ.

THE DESIGN OF LANGUAGE

Language is a fundamental aspect of our lives, we start building our identities from the moment we are exposed
to it when we are little kids; it is the instrument that allows us to process and acquire knowledge and
communicate with the rest of society.

Now, other living beings such as dogs, bees, and birds communicate as well through different fashions, so that
raises the question of how human language can be distinguished from their type of communication. And the
answer to that is the flexibility that allows human language to create new meanings and realities, which is to say
to be proactive. Animal communication tends to be only reactive since it is considered to be a routine produced
as a result of a reaction, that is why we say they lack the flexibility of human language, thus not consider it as a
language.

We can identify certain “design features” that help us distinguish this essential flexibility in human language.

- Arbitrariness: This characteristic refers to the fact that we can’t connect the meaning of a word with its
form of linguistic sign = the words don’t sound like their lexical meanings as an onomatopoeia
(/ˌɒn.əˌmæt.əˈpiː.ə/) would do, for example. This obviously doesn’t mean that we can’t connect meaning
to words, just that their form is arbitrary. For example, if we say the word “car” we can connect it with a
road vehicle with four wheels that transports people, but the word doesn’t look like a car or sound like a car.
 In fact, the different communities are free to encode what is significant by convention and adjust their
meanings to their realities.

- Duality: we can find two levels of structure operating in spoken and written human language. In the first
level, we have meaningless elements which, combined together, form meaningful units at the second level.
We should not only think of sounds and spoken language but also written language. Sounds (phonemes) and
letters on their own don’t express anything but combined with others we can create words and therefore a
message.

Something else we can distinguish that shows proof of the flexibility of our language is the difference between
medium and mode of communication: a mode is a means of communication and a medium is a channel or
system through which communications are conveyed.

When we talk of a ‘slurred speech’ in which sounds run into one another, we refer to the medium; when we talk
of a ‘stirring speech’ that evokes excitement or strong emotions, we refer to a mode, a way of using the medium
to communicate in a certain way.

For example: ‘script’, as in roman script, refers to a medium of writing (handwriting for reference). ‘Scripture’,
as in the Bible, refers to a written mode (which is sacred for the Christians).

When we exploit a new medium, we discover different modes of communication, that is why we can say that
written communication is different from spoken communication in the sense that we allow for different ways of
talking about things and interacting with other people according to how we do it.

Language, mind and social life

From the Universal Grammar perspective, the essential nature of language is cognitive. It is seen as a
psychological phenomenon: what is of primary interest is what the form of language reveals about the
human mind. Language also functions as a means of communication and social control. True, it is
internalized in the mind as abstract knowledge, but in order for this to happen it must also be
experienced in the external world as actual behaviour.
Another way of looking at language, therefore, would see it in terms of the social functions it serves.
What is particularly striking about language from this point of view is the way it is fashioned as
systems of signs to meet the elaborate cultural and communal needs of human societies. This is what
Michael Halliday calls “language as social semiotic”, that is language as a system of signs which are
socially motivated or informed in that they have been developed to express social meanings.
The emphasis here is on language as generic accomplishment. It can be conceded that other animals
use signs of various kinds to communicate with each other and to establish their communities. But the
structure of these communities is simple in comparison with human ones and their signs are hardly
comparable to the subtleties of the semiotic systems that have been developed in language to service
the complex social organization and communicative requirements of human communal life.
From this social view of language, the answer to why human language is as it is is that it has evolved
not with the biological evolution of the species but with the socio-cultural evolution of human
communities. Thus, one requirement of language is that it should provide the means for people to act
upon their environment, for the first person to cope with the third person reality of events and entities
“out there”, to classify and organize it and so bring it under control by a process of what we might call
conceptual projection. In Halliday’s words “language has to have an ideational function. Another
necessity is for language to provide a means for people to interact with each other, to establish a
basis for cooperative action and social relations: so language needs to discharge an interpersonal
function as well.
To the extent that these functions can be associated with systems of language in general, we may
suggest that they too might be regarded as features of universal grammar. They will be realized
differently in particular languages of course. In this case, the set of parameters are of a socio-cultural
and not of a cognitive kind.
So language can be seen as distinctive because of its intricate association with the human mind and
with human society. It is related to both cognition and communication, it is both abstract and
knowledge and actual behaviour.