Language and Cognition

CHAPTER 2 - Human and animal language

Many stories say that animals can talk.

However, the preconceived notion is that they are birds or animals mimicking something they heard from humans.

BUT creatures are capable of communicating - with other members of their species.

Communication

It is important to distinguish between specifically communicative signals and those that may be unintentionally
informative signals.

Someone can get information about you through signals we don't intentionally send:

 You sneezed - you have a cold

 You moved in your seat - you're not comfortable
 Mismatched socks - you're unorganized
 You have a strange accent - you come from somewhere else.

However, if one says "I am a candidate for a vacancy" - one is considered to be intentionally communicating.

But the blackbird is not thought to communicate intentionally as it sees a cat and starts squawking.

 When we talk about the distinction between human language and animal communication, we consider both in
terms of their potential as a means of purposeful communication.

Properties of human language

It is believed that communication is the primary function of human language

 However, it is not a distinguishing feature.
 All creatures communicate in some way.

 Presumably, creatures don't think about how they create their messages or check how they work (or don't).
 One barking dog doesn't give advice to another dog to bark in a different way.
 People are capable of reflecting on language and its use. - REFLECTIVENESS

The property of reflexivity explains the fact that we can use language to think and talk about language itself-one of the
distinguishing features of human language.

Without this, we would not be able to identify the other properties of human language.

DISPLACEMENT:

 When your cat comes home and calls out "meow" - you probably understand this message as referring to that
immediate time and place.
 If you ask a cat where it has been it will answer you "meow".
 Animal communication seems to be exclusively for this moment, here and now.
 It cannot be used to report on events remote in time and place.

 People can refer to past and future tense.

 This property is called - TRANSFORMATION.
 It allows you to talk about things and events that are not currently in your immediate environment
 Allows us to talk about things and places we are not sure exist (e.g., Fairies)
 Animal communication is thought to lack this property.
 EXCEPTION: bees - which perform a dance pattern to tell other bees where they have found nectar. - little
 feature of movement.

ARBITRARINESS:

 There is usually no "natural" connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.
 The relationship is quite arbitrary.
 It is impossible to look at an Arabic word and say that it has a natural and obvious meaning.
 We can't do the same with its English form - dog.

 The linguistic form has no natural or "iconic" relationship to the hairy, four-legged, barking object in the world.
 ARBITRALITY - an aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the world.

One can play with words and "debase" them - but this kind of play only emphasizes the arbitrary relationship that
usually exists between a word and its meaning.

There are words in the language whose sounds seem to "echo" the sounds of objects or actions and therefore seem to
have less arbitrary relationship. However, there are not many of them.

E.g. Cuckoo, crackling, slurping

 For any animal, the set of signals used in communication is finite.

 There seems to be a relationship between message and signal - non-arbitrariness
 Each variety of animal communication consists of a fixed and limited set of vocal or gestural forms.
 Many of these forms are used in specific situations and at specific times. (e.g., Mating period)

PRODUCTIVITY:

 Create constantly new expressions and new utterances, manipulating their language resources to describe objects
and situations.
 EFFICIENCY, Creativity, Openness
 The potential number of utterances in human language is infinite.

 Other creatures' communication systems are not like that.

 Cicadas have 4 signals
 Swallowtail monkeys 36 voice signals
 It does not appear that creatures produce new signals to communicate new experiences or events.
 A bee can't pinpoint a place if it's completely "new"
 Bees have their own set of signals and they all relate to horizontal distance
 When they were taken to the top they couldn't tell the other bees the vertical distance
 Therefore, other bees could not find this place.
 Karl von Frisch - he has EXPERIMENTED.

FIXED REFERENCE - a limiting feature of animal communication.

 Each signal is established as relating to a specific object or opportunity.

Monkeys of the vervets:

 CHUTTER - snake danger sign
 RRAUP - Eagle Alert
 They are fixed in terms of reference and cannot be manipulated.

When a person sees a snake that flies he will create a "new" signal such as "flying snake"
The monkeys shouted "CHUTT-RRAUP!"

CULTURAL TRANSMISSION:

 Language cannot be inherited.

 We acquire it in a culture where it is used by others.
 You are born in Korea but raised in England then you speak English.
  A cat having an early comparative experience will make a "meow" sound no matter what.

CILTURAL TRANSMISSION - The process by which language is passed from generation to generation.

 People are born with certain predispositions to acquire language in a general sense
 We are not born with the ability to produce speech in a particular language
 We acquire our First Language as children in the culture.

 Animals are born with a set of signals that are produced instinctively.
 Instinct must be combined with learning or exposure - for the birds to create the right song.
 Birds living in isolation by themselves, not hearing other birds - will produce songs - but they will be incorrect
in some way.
 Infants, growing up on their own - will not produce any "instinctive" language.
 In the process of human language acquisition, the cultural transmission of a particular language discovers a key
role.

DUALITY:

 Human language is organized on two levels or layers simultaneously.

 DIVERSITY or dual articulation.
 In speech production, there is a physical level at which we can produce individual sounds,
 Such as n, b, and i.

 As individual sounds, none of these discrete forms have intrinsic meaning.

 In a particular combination such as bin, we have another level that produces a meaning different from the meaning
of the combination in nib.
 At one level we have distinct sounds, and at another level we have distinct meanings.

It is the most economical feature of human language.

 Given a limited set of discrete sounds, we are able to create a large number of combinations of sounds (e.g.,
Words) that vary in meaning.

Among other creatures, each communication signal appears to be a single, fixed form of
which cannot be divided into separate parts.

The dog utters a woof:

If the dog were operating on a dual level (i.e., duality), one would expect to hear different combinations with different
meanings, such as oowf ("I'm hungry") and foow ("I'm very bored").

TALKING TO ANIMAL

There are many spoken languages that humans use with animals - under the impression that the animal understands
what is being said to it.

Riders can say Whoa to horses and they'll stop (or so it seems), we can say Heel to dogs and they'll follow us like we're
on pins (well, sometimes), and various circus animals go up, down, and roll over in response to spoken commands.

But we probably shouldn't take it as examples that animals understand human language.
 An animal produces a specific behavior in response to a specific sound or noise stimulus.
 But he doesn't understand what the words mean.

And it is even less likely that animals are capable of producing human language!
 We do not observe animals learning the language of another species.

CHIMPANZEES AND LANGUAGE

 Luella and Winthrop Kollegg's experience raising a chimpanzee with their son.
 Chimpanzee - Gua
 He understood about 100 words in
 But he didn't say any

 Catherine and Keith Hayes - raised Chimpanzee in her home as if she were a human child
 Chimpanzee - Viki
 5 years
 I managed to say a few words
 Mom, dad, cup
 It has been found that nonhuman primates do not have a physically constructed vocal tract that is suitable for
articulating the sounds used in speech.
 They cannot make human speech sounds.

WASHOE:

 Beatrix and Allen Gardner - tried to teach a chimpanzee sign language

 Chimpanzee - Washoe
 Sign language has all the essential properties of human language and is acquired by many congenitally deaf
children as their natural first language.
 They raised her like a human child, in a domestic setting.
 Sign language was always used when Washoe was around and she was encouraged to use signs, even her own
incomplete "child versions" of signs used by adults.
 3.5 years
 She learned to use more than 100 characters
 Airplane, baby banana, window, woman, you...
 She had the ability to take these forms and combine them to create a "Sentence"
 Some words seem to have been invented by Washoe e.g. Waterbird - meaning swan.
 This seems to indicate that with her communication system had performance potential.
 She understood more signs than she produced
 Former ws cheap to talk - questions and answers
 Francine Petterson - demonstrated similar skill in working with gorillas
 Gorilla - Koko

SARAH AND LANA:

 Ann and David Pramack - taught chimpanzees to use a set of plastic shapes to communicate with humans.
 They represented "words" - which can be arranged in sequences to build "sentences".
 Sarah - a chimpanzee - stacked vertically
 She was systematically taught to associate these shapes with objects or activities.
 She was a caged animal who, with the help of food rewards, was taught to manipulate a set of symbols.
 After mastering the ability to use lots of shapes - she was able to get an apple - by choosing the right shape.
 THESE SYMBOLS WERE ARBITRARY

 Duane Rumbaugh - trained a chimpanzee named Lana

 She taught her the Yerkish language
 It consisted of a set of symbols on a large keyboard connected to a computer.
 For example, when she wanted to drink water she had to press 4 symbols in the right order.

Both Sarah and Lana demonstrated the ability to use word symbols and basic structures in ways that superficially
resemble using language.

It was pointed out that when Lana u,lived the "please" symbol, she did not need to understand the meaning of the
English word "please".
 The "please" symbol on a computer keyboard may simply be the equivalent of a button on a vending machine
 So, we can learn to operate vending machines without necessarily knowing the language.
CONTRIBUTIONS:
 Psychologist Herbert Terrace - flooded that chimpanzees simply produce signs in response to human requests and
tend to repeat signs used by humans, yet are treated as if they are participating in a "conversation." - based on
work with a chimpanzee named Nim.

Chimpanzee behavior is seen as a kind of conditioned response to cues given (often unconsciously) by human trainers.

Herbert concluded that chimpanzees are clever creatures who learn certain behaviors in order to obtain rewards and, in
essence, perform sophisticated "tricks."

 The Gardners argued in response that they were not animal trainers, nor did they instill conditioned responses in
Washoe and then induce them.

In experiments, those designed to eliminate the possibility of a human providing clues, showed that in the absence of
any human, Washoe was able to produce correct characters to identify objects in pictures.

They also highlight an important difference between Washoe and Nima!!!

 Nim was kept in a windowless cell - a research animal
 He dealt with many assistants who often did not know sign language
 Washoe lived in a domestic environment
 He had many opportunities to play and interact with fluent sign language speakers.
 When Washoe was with another group of chimpanzees - they used sign language with each other even when
there were no humans.

KANZI:

 Sue Savage-Rumbaugh - tried to teach a bonobo chimpanzee to use Yerkish symbols

 The chimpanzee's name was Matata and she had an adopted son Kanzi
 Kaniz was always there for her
 Matata didn't do very well with the symbols.
 Kanzi started using their spontaneous symbols with great ease.
 He learned not by teaching, but by exposure to language and observation of its use at a very early age.
 They will develop over 250 symbols.
 By the time he was 8 years old, he demonstrated an understanding of spoken English at a level comparable to
a 2.5-year-old human child.
 There was evidence that he used a fixed set of "soft sounds" - as words in reference to things like bananas,
grapes and juice.
 He was able to use symbols alby asking for his favorite movie. "GREYSTOKE" - About the legend of Tarzan.

USING LANGUAGE

Several questions were answered during the experiments:

1. Were Washoe and Kanzi able to participate in human interaction using a symbol system chosen by humans rather
than chimpanzees?
a) YES
2. Were Washoe and Kanzi able to speak language at a level comparable to a human child entering kindergarten?
a) NO
However, we still do not have an uncontroversial definition of what counts as "language use"
Possible solutions:

 Stopping thinking of language, at least in the phrase "used language," as the only thing you can have or not have.
 It can then be said that there are at least 2 ways of thinking about what "using language" means.

In a very broad sense: Language serves as a type of communication system that can be seen in many different
situations.

Examples:
1. "Language use" behavior of a 2-year-old human child in interaction with a caregiver.
2. In another situation, we observe very similar behavior in chimpanzees and bonobos when they interact with people
they know.

In both cases, we observe how they "use language."

There is a difference, however:
1. At the core of a 2-year-old's communication activity is the ability to develop a highly complex system of sounds and
structures and a set of computational routines that will allow him to produce extended utterances containing a
potentially infinite number of new sentences.
2. No other animal "uses language" in this sense.

In this sense, we say that human language is unique!