Emaculada Joaquim Churana

Animals and Human language - Communication systems or design features

Degree in English

Púnguè University
Chimoio
2022
 Emaculada Joaquim Churana

Animals and Human language - Communication systems or design features

General Linguistics Assignment to be

submitted to the Department of Linguistics
and Translation, for assessment purposes, 1st
year.

Lecturer: MSc. Derreck R. Mafelanjala

Púnguè University
Chimoio
2022
Indices
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................3

1.1. Objectives........................................................................................................................3

1.1.1. General objective..............................................................................................................3

1.1.2. Specific objectives............................................................................................................3

1.2. Methodology...................................................................................................................3

2. Animals and Human language - Communication systems or design features........................4

2.1. Animals and Human language........................................................................................4

2.1.1. Animal Language..............................................................................................................4

2.1.2. Comparison with human language....................................................................................4

2.1.3. Further Research...............................................................................................................7

2.2. Design features................................................................................................................8

2.2.1. About human language.........................................................................................8

2.2.2. Hockett’s design features......................................................................................9

2.2.3. Evaluation of Hockett’s design features.............................................................11

3. Conclusion............................................................................................................................13

4. Bibliographic References......................................................................................................14
 3

1. Introduction

This work, therefore, aims to present language content in a concise summary of the
evolutionary background to the emergence of language as a distinctly human communication
system by first examining its nature, in terms of its particular characteristics and components
when compared to other systems. of animal communication.

The evolution of language, sometimes called biolinguistics (Jenkins, 1999; Givón, 2002), is
the study of the origins of human language, within the theoretical framework of evolutionary
biology led by Charles Darwin's seminal 1859 publication The Origin of Species. As an
academic research field, it is highly interdisciplinary, attracting researchers from diverse
backgrounds such as: anthropology, computer science, evolutionary biology, linguistics,
molecular biology, and neuroscience. However, before examining the possible ways in which
language first appeared among humans, a thorough appreciation of its uniqueness as a
communication system and the evolutionary descent of humans as a species is crucial.

1.1. Objectives
1.1.1. General objective
 Understand Animals and Human language - Communication systems or
design features.

1.1.2. Specific objectives

 Describe the language of animals and human language;
 Present the design features;
 Explain human and animal language.

1.2. Methodology

In order to carry out the work, it was necessary to consult sources in order to acquire
information that deals with the content under study. Such sources include physical manuals
that refer to books and works carried out previously and electronic manuals acquired via the
internet and their respective indicators are present on the last page of the work, where they are
scored as references.
 4

2. Animals and Human language - Communication systems or design features

2.1. Animals and Human language
2.1.1. Animal Language

While the name “Animal Language” might be a little of misnomer since there has not been a
single animal language that manages to fulfil all of Hockett’s design feature (even excluding
the ones that were deemed as unnecessary in definition above), it serves as a good collective
name for animal communication as a whole, and allows for easy comparison with what we
term human language.

However, it is important to note that animals can convey various message to each other. For
example, to give warnings or to express their emotions such as anger and fear. In addition,
animals communicate to locate food sources as well as their desire to willingness to mate.
Thus, a more accurate term for animal language would be animal communication.

The communicative capacity of animals is still not able to match the sophistication and
productivity of human language. This section thus explores the communicative ability of
animals, contrasting it with features of human language, as designated by Hockett.

2.1.2. Comparison with human language

Since the 1960s when Hockett first described a set of 13 features defining human language
and how these features putatively made it distinct from other forms of animal communication,
advances the study of animal communication have also revealed closer similarities with some
of Hockett’s design features of language.

2.1.2.1. Honeybees

Apis mellifera commonly known as the domestic honey bee is a colonial insect living in hives
that are made up of one queen (a fertile female), a few drones (males) and thousands of
workers (infertile females). The workers are responsible for foraging for food namely nectar
and pollen as well as tending to the young (2014).

German ethologist Karl von Frisch’s (1886–1982) theorized that bees communicate the
distance and the direction of food sources to each other via two kinds of dances: the round
dance and tail-waggle dance (Munz, T. 2005), therefore indicating that bees exhibit a form of
displacement when communicating with each other.
 5

2.1.2.2. Round Dance

Round dance is usually performed when bees find food source which are less than 50 meters
from their hives. Bees will run around in narrow circles before reversing direction to their
original course. This may be repeated a few times at the same location or move to another
location on the comb. Although a round dance communicates distance, it does not reflect the
direction (R. Tarpy, D., n.d.).

2.1.2.3. Waggle Dance

Bees will perform the waggle dance in the shape of figure-eights when returning from sources
which are located farther than 75 meters from their hives. Von Frisch mentioned that the
frequency of turns in the dances varied inversely with the distance of foods while the straight
runs of the dances indicated their direction of the food. He also found out that bees can detect
polarized light and thus, oriented their dances and foraging flights with respect to the sun
(Munz, T., 2005).  Due to the directional information that is based upon the sun’s position, a
forager’s dance for a particular resource will change during a day.

2.1.2.4. Vervet Monkeys

In addition, warning calls by the vervet monkey exhibit some level of semanticity as they
produce distinctly different calls depending on the type of predator seen (Vagell, 2011).

According to a 1980 experiment by Robert Seyfarth, Dorothy Cheney and Peter Marler, alarm
calls for different types of predators sounded distinctly different and each call was able to
elicit a distinct defensive response. When the leopard call was played, the subjects ran up into
the trees while when eagle call were played, subjects looked up and run out of trees into lower
bushes. When snake calls were played, subjects immediately stood on their hind legs and
looked on the ground around them. Their calls however, show a lack of productivity as they
only make warning calls that reflect the present situation and not in the past.

2.1.2.5. Elephants

In 2006, keepers at Seoul’s Everland zoo were surprised when they heard Kosik, a 16-year-
old elephant, talk. He had learned to talk by putting its trunk in its mouth and mimicking the
words it heard from its caretakers: “yes,” “no,” “lie down,” “sit down,” and four other phrases
in Korean. Scientists say that through Kosik they might be able to prove that elephants are
capable of learning language, although it is unlikely that he understands the meaning of the
 6

words he expresses (Ilbonito, 2015). Such an occurrence is considerably rare and usually
elephants will communicate by using gestures as well as “infrasounds” as explained below.

2.1.2.5.1. Gestures

Biologist and conservationist Joyce Poole and her husband, Petter Granli, both of whom
direct ElephantVoices, a charity they founded to research and advocate for conservation of
elephants in various sanctuaries in Africa, have developed an online database decoding
hundreds of distinct elephant signals and gestures. Poole and Granli have also deciphered the
meaning of acoustic communication in elephants. Below are two forms of gestures that
elephants commonly perform.

 Aggression: Normally in such an aggressive stance, an elephant will hold its head

well above its shoulders and with tusks lifted, direct its gaze at its provoker. An
elephant may also increase its height by standing on a log or an anthill to assume
greater stature, an approach used by males when they’re sizing each other up.
 Death: Elephants are empathetic towards one another by holding funerals for the dead
(Wolchover, 2012).  Elephants will try to rouse an injured or fallen elephants by
using their tusks and trunk to try and feed a dead elephant, or appear to lift or even
carry sick, dying, or dead elephants (Poole et al., 2015).

2.1.2.5.2. Infrasounds

A team of voice researchers and biologists led by Christian Herbst, Angela Stoeger and
Tecumseh Fitch has discovered that elephants produce “infrasounds” which are very low
frequency sounds, far from the hearing compatibility of the average human being.  One
possibility as to how “infrasounds” are produced is when the elephants tense and relax the
muscles in their larynx for each pulse of sound. Another possibility is that they are produced
like human speech or singing. Because the elephant larynx is so large, they are extremely low
in frequency. The “infrasounds” can travel several kilometers and provide elephants with a
“private” communication medium that plays a pivotal role in elephants’ complex social life.

2.1.2.6. Dolphins

Dolphins are highly sociable creatures, with a large brain relative to their body mass. Looking
at the figure below, we see how the expansion of the dolphin’s brain almost mirrors that of
human beings with the introduction of a form of communication and socializing propelling it
 7

to growth. Most dolphins produce a variety of sounds described as clicks, whistles, buzzes,
squawks, screams and barks (Herzing, 1996). Half a century of research has been dedicated to
trying to decipher the languages that dolphins use, with not much progress.

Scientists have not been able to determine the units that make up what might be an actual
dolphin language. In recent times however, technology has allowed for the advancement of
such research. Scientists have invented CHAT (cetacean hearing and telemetry), a machinery
designed to not only record dolphins, but also produce their signature sounds as well other
sounds that are dolphin-liked in nature. While at present, we are still in the dark about the
possible language that the dolphins might hold, we know a decent amount of what their
communication is capable of.

2.1.2.6.1. Clicking Noises In Isolation

The echolocation sounds are short, broadband pulses (Evans, 1973) which are produced in
low repetition rate trains or in high repetition rate bursts. Bursts of pulses can be used during
prey capture (Verfuss et al., 1996) and during hostile interactions (Blomqvist & Amundin,
1998). The bottlenose dolphin uses echolocation clicks with a peak frequency between 115
and 121 kHz when recorded in open waters (Au, 1993). This mode of communication allows
dolphins to navigate, recognize their friends and foes as well as escape from obstacles (Mary
Cerullo, 2013).

2.1.2.6.2. Whistling

Whistles consist of narrow-band tones of constant frequency (CF) or tones that vary in
frequency. Harmonic components are normally present (Popper, 1988). Dolphins use whistles
to maintain contact within their pod or when meeting other pods of dolphins. Their whistles
may indicate danger or a cry for help. Scientists think that each dolphin has its own unique
whistle, almost akin to our names. Whistles may also help dolphins hunt cooperatively and
coordinate migratory movements.

2.1.3. Further Research

Even though much research has been done on animal communication, more can be done to
understand how and why different modes of vocalizations come about. One way to do so is to
study the behaviour of animals in tightly knit social groups, such as dolphins and whales.
 8

According to biologist Kathy Heise, resident killer whale communication is distinctly

different from transient killer whales. The mode of communication employed by one group of
whales does not seem to be mutually intelligible with the other. Future research on these
“dialects” differing from family to family could help shed light on why dialect groups exist in
human languages. To date, humans have not been able to fully bridge the gap with naturally
sociable animals such as whales. Instead of trying to teach animals human language to
understand how animals process language, humans could try to imitate and manipulate the
sounds of animal vocalizations to see how these animals react to it.

By manipulating and observing how animals react to these stimuli could help us eventually
understand the exact meaning of their vocalizations. During a joint project by Australian
telecommunications company Optus and the Humpback Acoustic Research Collaboration, a
chamber orchestra was placed out in the sea while imitating sounds of a whale song, drawing
the attention of curious humpback whales (Macleod, 2009).

This shows us that there is the possibility of employing music as a communicative tool to
bridge the language gap between animals and humans in order to shed some light on the
acoustic properties of language.

2.2. Design features

2.2.1. About human language

Language is a system of communication uniquely associated with humans and distinguished

by its capacity to express complex ideas. Notably, studies analysing the various features of
human language have informed our understanding of language as a distinctly human trait.
Specifically, language is thought to possess a highly structured system of encoding and
representing concepts through either speech sounds or manual gestures, depending on whether
they are spoken or signed.

Likewise, studies which have attempted to methodically dissect this system of human
communication into various parts, or components, have informed our understanding of the
reasons for the immense expressive power of language.

We’ll start off with a featural analysis of what defines a language, followed by an evaluation
of these features with a specific focus on how human language can be compared to animal
communication.
 9

2.2.2. Hockett’s design features

In 1960, the linguistic anthropologist Charles Francis Hockett conducted a pioneering featural

study of language. In the study, he listed 13 design features that he deemed to be universal
across the world’s languages. More importantly, these features distinguished human language
from animal communication.

While the first 9 features could also match primate communications, the last 4 were solely
reserved for human language. Later on, Hockett added another 3 features that he saw as
unique to human language. Thus, it can be said that human language share a general set of
features that help set it apart from communication among animals.

2.2.2.1. Vocal-Auditory Channel

With the exception of signed languages, natural language is vocally transmitted by speakers
as speech sounds and auditorily received by listeners as speech waves. Although writing and
sign language both utilize the manual-visual channel, the expression of human language
primarily occurs in the vocal-auditory channel.

2.2.2.2. Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception

Language signals (i.e. speech sounds) are emitted as waveforms, which are projected in all
directions (‘broadcasted into auditory space’), but are perceived by receiving listeners as
emanating from a particular direction and point of origin (the vocalising speaker).

2.2.2.3. Transitoriness

Language signals are considered temporal as sound waves rapidly fade after they are uttered;
this characteristic is also known as rapid fading. In other words, this temporal nature of
language signals requires humans to receive and interpret speech sounds at their time of
utterance, since they are not subsequently recoverable.

2.2.2.4. Interchangeability

Humans can transmit and receive identical linguistic signals, and so are able to reproduce any
linguistic message they understand. This allows for the interlocutory roles of ‘speaker’ and
‘listener’ to alternate between the conversation’s participants via turn taking within the
context of linguistic communication.
 10

2.2.2.5. Total Feedback

Humans have an ability to perceive the linguistic signals they transmit i.e. they have
understanding of what they are communicating to others. This allows them to continuously
monitor their actions and output to ensure they are relaying what they are trying to express.

2.2.2.6. Specialization

Language signals are emitted for the sole purpose of communication, and not any other
biological functions such as eating. In other words, language signals are intentional, and not
just a side effect of another behaviour.

Contrasting example: Biological functions which may have a communicative side effect:
such as a panting dog which hangs out its tongue to cool off (biological), may simultaneously
indicate to its owner that it is feeling hot or thirsty (communicative).

2.2.2.7. Semanticity

Specific language signals represent specific meanings; the associations are ‘relatively fixed’.
An example is how a single object is represented by different language signals i.e. words in
different languages. In French, the word sel represents a white, crystalline substance
consisting of sodium and chlorine atoms. Yet in English, this same substance is represented
by the word salt.

Likewise, the crying of babies may, depending on circumstance, convey to its parent that it
requires milk, rest or a change of clothes.

2.2.2.8. Arbitrariness

There is no intrinsic or logical connection between the form of specific language signals and
the nature of the specific meanings they represent. Instead, the signal and the meaning are
linked by either convention or instinct.

Contrasting example: Conveyance of aggression in crabs – strongly threatened crabs express

their potential intention to fight by raising their front claw, which is partially iconic given that
crabs use their craw pincers to attack prey and defend against predators.
 11

2.2.2.9. Discreteness

Language signals are composed of basic units and are perceived as distinct and individuated.
These units may be further classified into distinct categories. These basic units can be put in
varying order to represent different meanings. The change in meaning is abrupt, and rarely
continuous.

2.2.2.10. Displacement

Displacement also includes prevarication, which is the ability to lie or produce utterances

which do not correspond with reality. Language signals may be used to convey ideas about
things not physically or temporally present at the time of the communicative event such as a
topic that is linked to the past or future.

2.2.2.11. Productivity

Productivity is also called openness or creativity.  It entails reflexiveness, the ability of

language to be used to talk about language. Humans can use language to understand and
produce an indefinite number of novel utterances.

2.2.2.12. Cultural Transmission

Although humans are born with the innate ability to learn language, they learn (a) particular
linguistic system(s) as their native language(s) from elders in their community. In other
words, language is socially transmitted from one generation to the next, and a child reared in
isolation does not acquire language.

2.2.2.13. Duality of Patterning

The discrete speech sounds of a language combine to form discrete morphological units,
which do not have meaning in itself. These morphemes have to be further combine to form
meaningful words and sentences.

2.2.3. Evaluation of Hockett’s design features

While Hockett’s list of design features may appear comprehensive, it contains three key
limitations. Firstly, Hockett’s list is drawn up from the narrow perspective of spoken
language. However, human language can be expressed in both the audio-vocal (spoken) and
 12

visuo-manual (sign) modes: sign languages are equally complex and fully grammatical
linguistic systems (Stokoe, 2005).

As Corballis (2009, p. 22) notes, there is:

growing evidence that the signed languages of the deaf have all of the grammatical
and semantic sophistication of spoken languages, as exemplified by the fact that
university-level instruction at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, is conducted
entirely in American Sign Language (ASL).

Therefore, his first two features, the vocal-auditory channel and broadcast transmission and
directional reception, are only relevant to the auditory nature of spoken language, and cannot
be strictly considered necessary to human language.

Secondly, Hockett’s list is a plain compilation of all discernible features of human language;
it does not indicate which features are critical to the linguistic system of communication.  For
example, the sixth and seventh features of specialization and semanticity are likely to
be properties of all natural systems that have developed for communication, rather than
human language per se.

Thirdly, Hockett’s list includes many features that relate to the physical characteristics and
production of linguistic signs (either via speech or gestures), rather than language as a
communicative tool per se. For example, the third and fifth features of transitoriness and total
feedback appear to be more relevant to the physical, rather than semiotic, properties of the
speech sounds and gestures used in spoken and sign languages.

In other words, the fact that sound waves and physical gestures are spatially transmitted
makes them necessarily transitory and perceptible to the producer at the same time. Also, the
fourth feature of interchangeability similarly appears more relevant to the physical ability of
language users to imitate or reproduce the speech sounds or gestural signs used in spoken and
sign languages, rather than their cognitive ability to use these signs communicatively.

This therefore leaves only six main features: arbitrariness, discreteness, displacement,
productivity, cultural transmission and duality of patterning. However, in order to understand
how these features are crucial to human language as a system of communication, a
componential analysis the focus of our next section is in order.
 13

3. Conclusion

Although there are some animals which seem to exhibit some forms of human language,
animal and human communication are still a major contrast from each other. In the case of
Kosik, for example, the question of whether the elephants are capable of expressive speech
(as opposed to straight mimicry) has yet to be fully determined. In conclusion, the use of
human language is only unique to us and not only does it allow us to communicate with one
another, it also allows us to form sentences with infinite variety and nonsensical yet
understandable sentences.

A monkey can scream to warn others of an approaching predator, or alert them to tasty food
source, but it cannot communicate something like “Doesn’t that hawk have a funny looking
beak?” or “With a little salt, this fig would taste divine”. Jason G. Goldman, a science writer
based in Los Angeles puts it simply: Only humans are able to utter grammatical nonsense.

While we continue to do further research as well as encounter new discoveries about animal
communication, we seem to further and further establish the idea that our language – human
language – is unique and much more expressive than any other form of communication found
in the animal kingdom. We continue to attempt to teach animals our language, in a hope that
one species will be able to adapt to it as well as we have, but continuously fall short in that
regard. All signs seem to point towards the uniqueness of our language. However, as
technology continues to improve, we begin to have more and more ways to decipher the
current communication systems they have instead of teaching them our language. And maybe,
just maybe, one of them will prove to us that we are not the only living creatures capable of
what we consider to be language.

Of course, human language did not spring up suddenly, fully formed and fully versatile. The
capacity for human language comes from a long line of evolution, with various stages and
adaptations that all work together to form what we know today as Human Language. In the
next part of the chapter, we will look at the evolution of human language; specifically, the
evolution of the capacity of human language we now possess.
 14

4. Bibliographic References
 Fitch, W. T. (2000). The evolution of speech: a comparative review, Trends in
Cognitive Sciences 4(7): 258-267.
 Fitch, W. T. (2007). The Evolution of Language: A Comparative Perspective,
in Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, edited by G. Gaskell. Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
 Givón, T. (2002). Bio-Linguistics: The Santa Barbara Lectures. Benjamins:
Amsterdam.
 Hockett, C. F. (1960). The Origin of Speech, Scientific American 203: 88–111. 
 Jenkins, L. (1999). Biolinguistics: Exploring the Biology of Language. Cambridge
University Press, New York.
 Kershenbaum, A. E. Bowles, T. M. Freeberg, D. Z. Jin, A. R. Lameira, K. Bohn
(2014). Animal vocal sequences: not the Markov chains we thought they were.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
 Kilneremail, J. M., & Lemon, R. N. (2013). What We Know Currently about
Mirror Neurons.
 Kirby, S., Cornish, H., & Smith, K. (2008). Cumulative cultural evolution in the
laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human
language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America 105 (31): 10681-10686
 Kuthy, K. D. (2001, September 28). Arbitrariness in Language.
 Pinker, S. (2010). The cognitive niche: Coevolution of intelligence, sociality, and
language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (2): 8993–8999