Discussion About Animal Communication and Language

One of the ways humans learn about themselves is by studying animals. Studying communication in animals is an important topic because it can lead to clues on why the human brain is so advanced. This information can potentially give us an idea of the evolution of language and where or why our skills emerged. Growing up with a dog, this is not the first time animal communication has crossed my mind. My Yorkshire Terrier, Shazzy, always seems to find a way to communicate her needs to me and my parents, and she even responds to our verbal commands. Before coming to the University of Iowa, I had considered her actions and reactions as some form of “language.” However, now that we have gone over the different characteristics of language, I no longer consider this language, just a communication system.

Animals use a communication system. According to our lecture notes, a language system is classified by a signal being transmitted, a mode of transmission, and a goal of the signal. One example of this is bees. Honeybees are known for being very good at directions and being able to convey an exact location to the hive. In the video we watched in lecture, the honeybee would use the position of the sun and do a dance to show the direction and how long the other bees should travel. The signal is the direction and distance conveyed, the mode is through their movement, and the goal is to find nectar. Another example of an animal communication system is when birds use a certain call to mean danger. There appears to be no higher complexity other than to express that there is a threat in the area. Both examples of communication occur in the here-and-now. However, one of characteristics of human language that differentiates it from animal communication is being able to communicate something separate from the present time or the present setting, also called displacement.

According to our lecture notes, there are six characteristics of language that are not present in animal communication: arbitrariness, displacement, productivity, discreteness, semanticity, and duality of patterning. The first one, arbitrariness, means that there is no connection between the signal and its meaning. For example, the phonemes combined to make “cat” in English have no connection or significance to an actual cat. This is the reason every language has a unique word for cat. Animal communication, however, does not use arbitrary sounds. One example is a dog’s bark. When my dog barks at me, she wants my attention for something, but it is not totally clear for what because the bark sounds the same every time.

The second characteristic is displacement, briefly mentioned above. Displacement is the idea that we can communicate about something that is not presently happening. In the case of humans, some examples of displacement are discussing the future/past or what we hope for. Animal communication is not this advanced. Most examples of animal communication are expressed because of a reaction to their present environment. Some examples of this are a dog marking its territory, the warning of a predator, deterring a predator. In the case of domesticated animals, they will communicate that they need food/water, to go outside, or that they want to play. However, none of these examples show a displacement from their present environment. One example of animal displacement is the honeybee dance. It enables them to communicate about something not presently there.

Discreteness is the idea that humans can say any word at any pitch and any volume, and it won’t mean anything different. For example, someone could scream “frog” at you or whisper it, and it still wouldn’t mean anything other than a frog. Language is made of units that are discrete, have meaning, and are be repeated. Bird communication has this. The songs they sing for mates and other purposes are repeated and more complex than one call. However, other animals do not have discrete sounds.

The fourth characteristic is productivity. Productivity means that someone that uses a language can create and understand novel utterances. For example, “the dog with green gills flew over the cloud” is a sentence that has never happened, but a language user can create it and understand it because they understand the rules of grammar. The Instagram page “Hunger4Words” is run by an SLP whose dog uses an AAC device. Dogs do not have the right anatomy required for speech or for sign, so an interesting consideration is whether they have the skills to use language but have no means to. With this device, the dog can produce English phrases and communicate with her owner. She has even used novel phrases like “help water outside” to communicate that her button for “beach” was broken. Koko the gorilla from our lecture notes was taught sign language and could combine the words taught to make new meanings like “frozen lollipop” for a frozen banana. However, most other animals do not demonstrate productivity.

Semanticity is the characteristic that a specific sound combination corresponds to a specific meaning. Human languages all contain specific words that have specific sound combinations and correspond to a meaning. The example before of bird songs having specific meaning may have some sort of semantic correlation, but there is no evidence of this. All other animal communication does not use specific sound combinations that mean something specific.

The last characteristic is duality of patterning. This is the idea that language is made of two levels: words/morphemes and phonemes. Animal communication does not reach this level of complexity that we know of. Like discussed above, birds have the means to use different phonemes, but this has not been proven.

Overall, animals and humans both communicate, but we cannot call animal communication a language. Individual animals have certain characteristics of language, but no animal demonstrates all six. Growing up, I used to imagine everything my dog understood as them understanding my language. However, now I believe it may have simply been an association between the word I say that corresponds to something the dog wants. However, the continued studying of animal communication methods could lead to discovering something more complex that humans haven’t identified.  

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