Communication

Two types of communication signals.

  1. Intentionally informative - using language to say something
  2. Unintentionally informative - for example sneezing -> you have a cold, or mismatched socks -> you are disorganized

Glossolalia is speaking in tongues. This has no communicative purpose and is a form of non-intentional communication. Animals can perform both types of communication too. A bird on a branch singing is non-intentional while a bird squawking due to a cat is intentional.

Properties of Human Language

Reflexivity is specific to human language and is the ability to reflect on language and its uses. There are five properties of human language.

  1. Displacement - ability to refer to the past and future and also imaginary things (eg. santa or heaven) -> honey bees have this to an extent in that they can lead to the most recent honey source but not one from last week
  2. Arbitrariness - relationship between word and the object is arbitrary, exception to this are onomatopoeic words
  3. Cultural transmission - process where language is passed from one generation to the next. Humans are born with a predisposition to acquire language. Animal born with a set of specific signals that are produced instinctively.
  4. Productivity = creativity = open-endedness - humans create new expressions by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. Animals are fixed reference meaning they can’t add new words, example a bee can not signal honey on top of a radio tower as they do not have vertical signals only horizontal.
  5. Duality - human language organized at two levels -> distinct sounds and distinct meaning. Distinct sounds are sounds such as n, b and i, by themselves they have no meaning. When you combine them they can form bin or nib each with a distinct meaning. Animals only have single fixed form.

Talking to Animals

We may colloquially say we can speak to animals but what is actually happening that that the animal produces a behaviour in response to sound stimulus. They do not understand what the sound means.

Chimpanzees and Language

Chimpanzees have a different vocal tract so have great difficulty producing human sounds. Viki the chimp raised as a human could say mama, papa and cup.

Washoe

Washoe was a chimp that learned ASL in a domestic environment. By 3.5 years of age it had more than 100 words. IT could also produce sentences and combine the words to forms new words such as water and bird to become water bird meaning swan.

Sarah

Chimp used arbitrary plastic shapes representing words. Was not in domestic environment (kept caged) and was 5 years old at start of study. Rewarded with food. Organised symbols vertically. Could produce sentences.

Lana

Used artificial language called Yerkisk on keyboard. Had to press in correct sequence to get things.

Controversy

Problems with Sarah and Lana study were that use of symbols was not evidence of linguistic skills. Symbols on keyboard no different then pushing A1 on a vending machine. Herbert Terrace who use chimp Nim argued that chimps produce sign in response to people’s demands which is to say it was a learned behaviour. Counter argument by Washoe’s researchers (the Gardners) was the the chimp was fluent and later studies showed inter-chimp use of ASL when no humans were present.

Kanzi

Kanzi adopted son of another ape being taught Yerkish witnessed Mom’s training and learnt from exposure. Developed extended vocabulary of 250 words. By 8 years of age he could understand English to the level of a 2.5 year old. Was also able to learn how to make fire and cook food from a documentary and ask for it to be played again.

Using Language

We can think about language in two ways.

  1. The capacity to develop complexity and computational procedures which lead to infinite number of novel utterances.
  2. The limited capacity to only use what is given.

Study Questions

  1. What is displacement? The property of language that allows user of it to talk about things not in their immediate environment or time.
  2. What is the difference between a communication system with productivity and one with fixed reference? The system with productivity is capable of producing an unlimited amount of new expressions, which the fixed reference system means that there is alimited number of signals in the system and they only relate to a single object or occasion.
  3. Why is reflexivity considered to be a special property of human language? It is the property that allows humans to use language to think and talk about language, it does not appear in any other creature’s communication.
  4. What kind of evidence is used to support the idea that language is culturally transmitted? If you take a child born to Asian parents and raise them in Europe with European parents the child will speak the European language.
  5. How to do we think the harbor seal was able to yell “Hey! Hey you!”? It was imitating a sound it had heard.
  6. Why isn’t glossolalia considered to be a communicative language use? There is not intention to communicate. Glossolalia is just the production of a stream of sounds and syllables as a form of self-expression.
  7. Which English words was Viki reported to be able to say? Mama, papa, and cup.
  8. What property did Washoe’s language seem to have when she used an expression such as “water bird” to refer to a swan? This seemed to be a demonstration of productivity.
  9. How did the Gardners try to show that Washoe was not simply repeating sign made by interacting humans? They did experiments where humans could not provide clues, and Washoe was able to answer correctly.
  10. If Sarah could use a gray plastic shapre to convey the meaning of the word red, which property does her “language” seem to have? It displays arbitrariness.
  11. What was the name of the “language” that Lana learned? It was Yerkish.
  12. What was considered to be the key element in Kanzi’s language learning? It was learning language through exposure to language use.
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