IS LANGUAGE SPECIES SPECIFIC?

Dr. Noam Chomsky, the linguist whose theory that language is innate and unique to people forms the infrastructure of the field, says that attempting to teach linguistic skills to animals is irrational--like trying to teach people to flap their arms and fly.

Species like chimpanzee shares 98.4% of the human genetic code.

So, do you think chimpanzees can speak or produce speech ???

A simple way to disprove this Innateness Hypothesis, as linguists call it, is to demonstrate that other species have the capacity to speak but for some reason simply have not developed speech. A logical candidate for such a species is the chimpanzee, which shares 98.4% of the human genetic code. Chimpanzees cannot speak because, unlike humans, their vocal cords are located higher in their throats and cannot be controlled as well as human vocal cords.

• Apes, unlike people, can be trained to learn only a limited number of words and only with difficulty.

• Apes use signs or computers to get a reward, in the same way that other animals can be taught tricks. But learning tricks is not equivalent to learning language.

• Apes don’t use syntax. For example, they don’t recognize the difference between Me eat apple and Apple eat me.

why lg species specific??

1. Displacement

Humans can use language to refer to the past, present and future

Displacement is the property of human language that allows language users to talk about things

and events not present in the immediate moment.

* Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property

2. Arbitrariness (in human language)

Generally, there is no ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.

3.Productivity

Productivity(creativity/ open-endlessness):

The number of utterance in any human language is infinite.

Animals:

- have limited set of signals to choose from (fixed reference)

- cannot produce any new signals to describe novel experiences

4. Cultural transmission (in humans)

- Humans inherit physical features from their

parents but not language.

- We acquire a language in a culture with other

speakers (not from parental genes)

Cultural transmission

The process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next.

5. Duality (double-articulation) – in humans

In speech production:

- At a physical level, sounds (e.g. g, d,& o)

mean nothing separately.

- At another level, they take on meaning only

when they are combined together in various

ways (e.g. god/dog)

Duality is one of the most economical features of human language (with a limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words))

Duality (double-articulation) –in animals

- Animals’ communicative signals are fixed and

cannot be broken into parts

Meow is not m + e + o + w

Sources:

Group presentation of psychology- ita, baljit and me~ngee...if

"Animal Language Article“ : www.santafe.edu/~johnson/articles.chimp.html

Animal & Human Language :www.kau.edu.sa/Files/.../2Animal%20&%20Human%20Language.pdf

Can Primates Talk? www.alphadictionary.com/articles/ling002.html