In the name of GOD Chapter2

Communication: 1.Communicative signals : Intentionally communicate something. For example, you go to a hospital and apply for the vacant position of senior brain surgeon. 2.Unintentionally informative signals : There is No intention in communicating something. For example, someone finds out you have a cold because you sneeze.

Animals : Communicative signals: When a bird Squawks because a cat appears. Unintentionally informative signals : When the Bird is sitting on a branch and looking at the ground, Because it is not communicating anything.

Properties of human language: Human can clearly reflect on languages and its Uses. Actually human can think and talk about language itself. This ability which animals don’t have is called reflexivity. For example when two dogs are barking they are not barking about barking, because they cannot reflect on their communicative messages.

Displacement : If you ask your pet cat what did he do? you Will get the answer mew. It shows the animals communication refers to present time not past or future time. On the contrary humans can refer to past and future time. This property is called displacement. We can talk about things or places which we are not sure about their existence like angles, fairies, santaclaus, superman, heaven, hell,….

There is a small exception between animals : Honeybee : When a honeybee finds a source of nectar performs a complex dance and shows the direction to the others but it must be the most recent food, therefore bees have a very limited type of displacement.

Arbitrariness : There is no natural connection between linguistic forms ک ل ب and its meaning. An example : The Arabic word we can’t recognize this word refers to a hairy four -legged barking object just by looking at the word’s shape. There is a game with words in which we can fit the idea they indicate, like; small tall, however this game just emphasize the arbitrariness of connection between a word and its meaning. About animals: There is clear connection between the conveyed message and the signal of it.

Their connection are limited and fixed and used in specific situation like establishing territory and at particular times like during the mating season. Productivity ( creativity – open endedness) : Human can create new expressions and utterances by manipulating (influence) their linguistic to describe new objects and situations. This property is called productivity which it means;

the number of utterances in human language is unlimited. Animals don’t have this property because animals can’t produce new signals to communicate new events. So the honeybee can indicate the nectar source but it shouldn’t be really new. An example : In an experiment, a hive of bees was placed at the foot a radio tower and a food source placed at the top. Ten bees were taken to the top and given the food.

Then they were sent to tell the rest about the source. They performed a bee dance and the rest flew around but couldn’t find the location. It seems that the bees communication has a fixed set of signals for communicating location and it relates to horizontal distance not vertical distance. This limiting feature of animal communication is called fixed reference.

Cultural transmission : We inherit physical features like the color of our eyes from our parents but not the language, we acquire a language in a culture. This process in which a language is passed on from one generation to the next one is called cultural transmission. Cultural transmission of a specific language is essential because we are not born with the ability to produce a specific language.

Animals : Animals are born with a set of specific signals that is named instinct. For example ; if some birds spend their first seven weeks without hearing other birds,they will instinctively produce songs but the songs will be abnormal in some way but if a human infant grows up in isolation, produces no instinctive language.

Duality : Human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously,this property is duality(double articulation).In speech production, we can produce individual sound like n, b and i ; it’s physical Level. We have another level in which we can produce the combination of nib. So at physical level we have distinct sounds and at second one there are distinct meanings.

Duality is the most economical feature of human language because we are able to produce a lot of combination with a limited set of sounds. Animals don’t have this feature. Their communicative signals seems to be a single fixed form that can’t be broken down into separate parts. If your dog can produce

the word woof(I’m happy to see you),But it’s not able to produce the word foow (I am really bored). Prof. Dr. Behzad Moridi. Presented by Marzieh Khazaeezadeh.