Animals and Human LAnguage

Communicative and informative signals

• Intentional vs. unintentional

Distinctions between human language and animal communication

• Displacement

Distinctions between human language and animal communication

• Arbitrariness

Distinctions between human language and animal communication

• Productivity

Distinctions between human language and animal communication

• Cultural transmission

Distinctions between human language and animal communication

• Duality

Talking to animals

• Chimpanzees and language: Gua→ understand 100 words → did not say any of them

• Viki →scientists spent 5 years to get her say E words → managed to produce some words, rather poorly articulated versions of mama, papa, and cup.

• Washoe → use version of ASL → by three and a half years → she came to use signs for more than 100 words → she could even combine these signs and produce sentences.

• Sarah → use plastic shapes to communicate with humans → the plastic shapes represented words and could be arranged in sequence to build sentences →able to produce sentences and understand complex structures.

• Lana →learned a language called Yerkish → aset of symbols on a large keyboard linked to a computer. When Lana wanted some water, she had to press four symbols, in the correct sequence, to produce the message please machine give water

• criticism

The controversy

• Herbert Terrace• Chimpanzees produce signs in response to the

demands of people • Conditional response to cues provided by human

trainers• Response: experiments were conducted by

eliciting responses• Animals reported to use sign language with or

with no human presence

Home assignments

• Study questions 1 to 5