General Review
To characterize more precisely the structure and nature of the language acquired by apes and other vertebrates, one needs to review some of the language inventions analyzed by scholars briefly. It is vital to determine their presence or absence in the linguistic abilities acquired by various species. Additionally, it is essential to note that the human communication system differs significantly from that of the animal kingdom in several important ways. There are many definitions and criteria for language in modern science. In relation to the issue of monkeys’ acquisition of intermediate language, the methodology of renowned American linguist Charles Hockett has been extensively studied and applied.
Hockett proposed that there are nine essential characteristics of human language, which are only partially represented in the natural languages of animals. Only in human language do they appear in their complete form. It is feasible to comprehend the extent to which animals may learn human language and the boundaries of their linguistic capacities by using Hockett’s fundamental table of important qualities.
In particular, he analyzed the gestural language of chimpanzees according to this criterion and discussed the essential critical characteristics of a language system (Lightfoot & Havenhill, 2019). The researcher applied them to human communication and specific modes of communication in four animal species. The essay’s focus is to analyze the features proposed by Hockett, starting from those applicable to all interaction systems and proceeding with specific ones typical of some limited linguistic groups.
Universal Characteristics
Language characteristics typical of all systems of communication include mode, semanticity, and pragmatism. Modes are revealed in the fact that all biological species possessing any mechanisms of interaction can have a different configuration of signs and algorithms of their transmission. For instance, the following four species–bee, gallows, herring gull, and sentinel, monkey–reflect the variety of modes of communication in the animal kingdom.
Semanticity is the assignment of specific meanings to certain abstract symbols, and dualism constructs this composition of symbols. If animals are incapable of recognizing spirituality, then all the messages they exchange must have been laid down in advance during phylogeny. Animals can only exchange a limited number of messages given to them by nature. Both alarm and greeting signals are such that they are pre-formulated (Wacewicz & Żywiczyński, 2014). The pragmatic function frees speakers from working only with pre-formulated messages and allows them to create new ones. Thus, humans can create new expressions to transmit the same meaning in different situations.
Specific Characteristics
Human language is unique amongst the different systems of animal communication because of two distinct features. One of these features is the use of symbols, which are representations of objects, ideas, or sounds. This allows communication to transcend the boundaries of physical proximity since symbols can be used to communicate even when the speaker and the listener are not in the same place. For example, the written word “dog” can communicate about a canine animal, even if the speaker and the listener have never seen the same dog.
The second feature of human language is its generativity, or the ability to form new meaning from a limited set of words. This is done through syntax and grammar, which allow infinite combinations of words to create new, meaningful sentences. For example, the sentence “The dog chased the cat” can be formed using only a limited set of words but creates an entirely new meaning. Most animal communication systems lack these two features. For example, bees use “dance language” to communicate the location of nectar to their hive. However, this system does not have symbols or generativity, as it can only convey a single message. Similarly, many birds use songs to communicate with each other, but these songs do not have symbols or syntax and are limited to conveying a single, fixed message.
The next group of features is only universal for some systems. Interchangeability means that the object of the message and its implications can be removed in time and space from the message’s source. Humans are free to represent past and future events. Many researchers believe that bees have this ability because of the symbolic language of dance. Cultural transmission means the ability to transmit agreement about the meaning of signals from one generation to another, not through genetics but through cultural continuity. It is important to note that only human systems can be replaced and productive.
Discreteness means communication is done through specialized systems, which keep their configuration the same over time. Animals transmit signals only through specific signals and not only through behavioral acts aimed at solving their life problems. Charijo, for example, responds directly to the physical aspects of messages given by the female, such as stretching of the abdomen and bulging of the eggs. In contrast, the female responds to the male’s changing body color (Wacewicz & Żywiczyński, 2014). Thus, male messages are more specialized than female messages, such as problem-solving behavior in the female’s life.
Arbitrariness means that the message consists of arbitrary units rather than being a representation of its meaning. Otherwise, the system of images corresponding to a particular message would be called iconic. An example of iconic writing is the girl who came up with the letters from R. Kipling’s fairy tales. The stranger’s letter asked for a new spear to replace the broken one, but the iconography, designed to represent objects and events, distorted the meaning, and the letter was not sent.
Another essential feature is displacement, which reveals itself in a language familiar to the animal and human kingdoms. Every communication system has writing, writing, and speech, which make up languages. Productivity means that speakers of a language can generate and comprehend nearly unlimited messages made up of a limited number of semantic elements consisting of a finite number of semantic units (Wacewicz & Żywiczyński, 2014). It is this mechanism that makes the use of analogy possible. It is important to note that the presence of productivity means that language is an open system; its speakers can produce an infinite number of messages about anything. The last two features are typical only of human beings since animals cannot decode an infinite number of messages and do not possess more than one form of expression.
Some scholars add to the given system of features duality, which means that human language has both phonological and grammatical organization. Rather than using separate signals for each message, human language consists of a finite number of sounds or phonemes, which add up in myriad ways to form a semantic structure (Lightfoot & Havenhill, 2019). The serpent was considered a symbol of wisdom because it possessed a symbolic language, but humans have an even more symbolic language.
All species, including humans, exist and survive in a complex informational system and must maintain contact with many different objects. Maintaining order and organization occurs when individual animals centered on solids determine their location in the overall system and when there is a clash of interests. In order to do this, an animal must be able to communicate its needs and the possibilities of satisfying them to members of its species (Wacewicz & Żywiczyński, 2014). Therefore, specific ways of communicating information are necessary for each species. These are different ways of communicating information, which can be similarly called language.
Peculiarities of Animal Language
Animal language is a complex concept, as is human language, and contains various transmission channels. Non-verbal communication plays an essential role in the process of the exchange of meaningful signs. Open eyes, raised fur, released claws, menacing growls, and hissing sounds are very bright signs of an animal’s acts of aggression. The ritual of a bird’s mating dance, a complex system of postures and body movements, brings quite different information to the partner. The meaning may be obvious to the animal’s relatives but only sometimes appears to the observer.
The most critical element of animal language is scent language. An Adogout on a walk will carefully sniff poles and trees for traces of other dogs and leave traces on them. Practically all species having glands can conduct powerful irritants that define their habitat and thereby mark the boundaries of their territory (Wacewicz & Żywiczyński, 2014). Ants walk unhindered along trails, orienting themselves by the odors left on the ground by those who walk in front of them. Finally, auditory language is of particular importance to animals. Animals cannot get any data using their body revelations, such as posture and movement unless they can visually detect each other. Scent language assumes that another animal is not far from where they are or has been.
An essential feature of language that needs to be considered separately is displacement. This phenomenon implies that a signal transmitted from one object to another can be distributed in space and time. The fact that human language possesses this feature is not in doubt among scientists. However, there is skepticism as to whether all animals can implement this feature of language. The presence of this feature implies the ability to:
- use signs in the absence of the object;
- transmit information about past and future events;
- transmit information that can only be assimilated utilizing signs.
Some scholars noticed that this phenomenon exists in ants. Many differences in the way these insects communicate have been recorded. They reflect the variety of ecological conditions in which insects solve different exploratory tasks. Scholars suggested that the information exchange process in many ant species may be related to tactile and antennal communication.
The ability of an organism to generate and comprehend an unlimited number of messages made up of a finite number of semantic units—for example, to say something the speaker has never spoken before—is known as productivity. In the absence of complex expressions, the communication system can be productive if new single-word messages are created utilizing particular analogs, the so-called “blending.” This term means that more and more new signals are created from parts of old signals.
Such systems are productive when there is no unambiguity. This happens, for example, when bees inform their fellow bees about the location of a new pollen source (Wacewicz & Żywiczyński, 2014). Hockett argues that the bee’s dance is productive but lacks unambiguity because the minor meaningful components of this dance consist not of meaning but of clearly different units, as in the cinema. Semantic associations, which give individual components of the bee’s dance a specific meaning, are embedded in the genes of insects, leading to the third important property of language.
Aquatic invertebrates are animals that most likely do not have the two specified functions. A prime example is jellyfish, incapable of transmitting communicative signals in unbounded space and time. This is because these animals communicate through tactile contact, which communicates danger or the need to reproduce. Nevertheless, the range of interaction is limited by the area of the body and the time of contact between the two animals.
Jellyfish need to possess the productivity of language because, due to the peculiarities of communication, they can transmit a limited range of meanings. Tactile contact can mean the presence of an individual nearby and its biological need to reproduce. These components are the only ones in the semantics of the language of jellyfish and other invertebrates, whose process of data exchange with each other is limited solely by body contact.
Some crustacean species are deprived of displacement and productivity because perceiving information about the world is exclusively creating a chemical reaction with the bottom surface. Such messages are limited solely to the time of exchanging atoms and molecules. Space does not allow the animal to go beyond the body area. For this reason, these species can only perceive data about the current state of the environment, the prerequisites for reproduction, and the location of potential food.
The difference between animal and natural human language is that human language is primarily a tool for thinking and perceiving the world. Animals have a similar linguistic function in their signaling systems. However, they cannot be compared with language.
Humans can talk about what is currently hidden from the eyes and other senses, but animals do not have this ability. Animals sign (emit) and read (radiate) unambiguously according to their motivational state (Christidis, 2023). Many animals’ communicative systems need to possess the properties of displacement and productivity because their content is limited to biological meaning. Since only symbols are essential for survival, some species can only manipulate signs by direct contact with objects.
Moreover, animal messages lack subject-object distinction, logical syntax, and general and discriminative judgments. Invertebrates’ language can be divided into parts based on symbolic images, where the part is equal to the whole. That is why they need more productivity and displacement. It is worth mentioning that natural human language is hierarchical, with smaller units serving to organize larger units, which creates an excellent condition for transmitting the message in space and applying it to different meanings. The interspecific language of invertebrates and some other species consists of signals of the same level.
Animal signals that have undergone more development can be hierarchical and hence fast productive. When an animal communicates danger, for example, the alarm cry is not a warning but rather the start of the action the animal will do since signs are not always obvious. To warn other animals that they are in danger, a predator will not sound the alarm (Stern, 2019). The cry of the terrified animal conveys its emotional state. The alarm cry signals a specific situation, such as the presence of a tiger, and alerts other animals in the herd.
As a result, when an animal makes a warning cry, it does not always indicate danger but rather the beginning of the action it will take if there is a threat. The scared animal’s emotional condition is expressed through its scream. The herd interprets the alarm cry as a signal for a specific circumstance, such as the appearance of a predator (Stern, 2019). Because animals lack censoring of social origin and are devoid of metaphor and symbolism, displacement occurs in them.
However, in the case of ineffective jellyfish communication, the second person invariably contracts after contact. As a result, the animal prepares to defend itself without being convinced of danger. This is because the amount of concern indicated by the indicator needs to be understood. Besides their natural habitat, they do not have specific material resources for symbolic representation. Natural language signals made by humans have boundaries that are distinct from the world of things and are independent of them.
Animal behavior is the only way to differentiate the borders of their signs, which is why productivity is relatively low even in evolved animals. Instead of using auditory signs as people do, animals mostly use olfactory, visual, and ultrasonic ones. Lastly, protocols for animal signs are no longer used, and new signs are rarely established (Stern, 2019). Only a tiny part of learned information is passed on to the following generation through communication, while most animal signals are intuitive and intrinsic. The habitat of invertebrates and the absence of many transmission pathways are the key factors limiting their output. These species are less capable than land-based species of efficient audio and visual transmission because of the peculiarities of their environment.
Conclusion
Thus, the definition of the famous American linguist Charles Hockett has been deeply analyzed and applied in relation to the issue of the assimilation of intermediate languages by raps. Using Hockett’s basic table of critical properties, it is possible to grasp the degree to which animals can utilize human language and the boundaries of their linguistic capacities. Researchers who study animal communication often use linguistic property tables because they want to compare the complexity of communication systems across species. In order to answer the question of how different humans are from other species, it is necessary to analyze various methods and approaches to studying the linguistic behavior of animals.
References
Christidis, M. (2023). Hockett’s Design Features of Language. An Evaluation. GRIN Verlag.
Lightfoot, D., & Havenhill, J. (2019). Variable properties in language : their nature and acquisition. Georgetown University Press.
Stern, L. (2019). The study of animal languages. Viking.
Wacewicz, S., & Żywiczyński, P. (2014). Language Evolution: Why Hockett’s Design Features are a Non-Starter. Biosemiotics, 8(1), 29–46. Web.