Introduccin a las Ciencias Lingsticas para Anglistas (2014/2015)

Dr. Ramrez Arlandi

Unit 2 ANIMALS AND HUMAN LANGUAGE

1. Lying and deception, which appear to be particularly human traits, may have prompted
Charles Hockett (1963) to include them (in technical terms, as prevarication ) as a possible
property of human language. In discussing this property, he claimed that "linguistic
messages can be false" while "lying seems extremely rare among animals". Keeping this in
mind, consider the following report of an event involving two female chimpanzees named
Matata and Lorel.

Matata returned to the social group for breeding and found herself subordinate to
Lorel, a female she had easily dominated in earlier years. The situation lasted for
some days, until Matata happened to be alone in the outer cage with Lorel and the
child of a still more dominant female. Matata reached up and yanked on the child's
leg where it dangled on the net above her. The little chimp squealed, of course. All
the other animals came pounding out of the inside cage, including the adult male
and the child's bristling mother. As they emerged Matata glared at Lorel and barked.
The dominant mother swung round and attacked innocent Lorel. From that dayon,
Matata again lorded it over Lorel whenever there was food to take or babies to
groom.

Is this an example of prevarication? If yes, does this mean that prevarication

cannot be treated as a key property of human language? If no, then what is it?
If you can accept the idea that animals are capable of prevarication, what must it
mean for our concept of intelligence or cognitive ability in animals? Are there
other indications of highly developed intelligence in non-humans?

2. At the beginning of this chapter we made an attempt to create a simple distinction

between 'communicative' and 'informative' signals. The basic element in that distinction
was the idea of INTENTION. However, whether something is done 'intentionally', or not, may
not always be so easily identified.

What about choice of clothing? Can what you wear be communicative?

Is body language communicative or informative? How about hand-shakes and facial
expressions?
Are all gestures interpreted in the same way by all cultures? Is it possible to
distinguish intentional (i.e. communicative) gestures from those that are
unintentional? Or is the actual concept of 'intentional behaviour' something that
differs from one cultural group to another?

3. What do the barking of dogs, the meowing of cats, and the singing of birds have in
common with human language? What are some of the basic differences?

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 Introduccin a las Ciencias Lingsticas para Anglistas (2014/2015)
Dr. Ramrez Arlandi

4. A wolf is able to express subtle gradations of emotion by different positions of the ears, the
lips, and the tail. There are eleven postures of the tail that express such emotions as
self-confidence, confident threat, lack of tension, uncertain threat, depression,
defensiveness, active submission, and complete submission. This system seems to be
complex. Suppose there were a thousand different emotions that the wolf could express in
this way.

Would you then say a wolf had a language similar to a human's?

If not, why not?

5. Suppose you taught a dog to heel, sit up, beg, rollover; play dead, stay, jump, and bark on
command, using the italicized words as cues.

Would you be teaching it language? Why or why not?

6. In discussing communication systems, the terms icon and symbol are sometimes used. An
icon is a sign that bears some type of physical resemblance to its referent. For example,
statues, road maps, and photographs are all icons. A symbol is an arbitrary sign; it bears no
necessary physical relation to its referent. For example, the word dog does not resemble a
dog.

Is the communication system of the honeybee iconic or symbolic?

7. Sign language users all over the world have been struggling for years to eradicate the
notion that because they do not use speech, their communications systems are not "real"
languages. One characteristic of languages in general is that there is an arbitrary relation
between words and what they represent. You can't hear the French word 'chien,' for
example, and know by its sound that it refers to what the English word 'dog' refers to.
Critics of sign languages have often described them as "iconic," as a series of pictures and
gestures for acting out the real world -and thus dismissed them as nothing more than
complex mime. Consider the issue of iconicity in American Sign Language (ASL) in light of
the following evidence.

(A) The signs for male and female:

original:
female: running thumb along jaw toward chin, mimicking bonnet strings
male: grasping an invisible cap near the forehead
current:
female: thumb on chin, with a hand shape as if thumbing your nose at someone
male: thumb on forehead, same handshape.
How have these signs changed over time? How does this development affect the
debate over whether signs are iconic or not?

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 Introduccin a las Ciencias Lingsticas para Anglistas (2014/2015)
Dr. Ramrez Arlandi

(B) First person pronouns:

When hearing children are first learning to speak, they often display a charming
tendency to confuse the pronouns 'you' and 'me.' When asked, Do you want milk,
they reply, Yes, you want milk, believing that they are describing themselves. In a
curious parallel, deaf children who are learning to sign will display, at the same age,
the tendency to confuse the signs for 'you' and 'me.' The adult will point to the
child and ask a question, and the child will point at the adult in reply, even though,
once again, these children are describing themselves.
Why do you think children make these mistakes?
Based on the assumption that ASL is a true language, would you expect
hearing children (who are not exposed to ASL) to make the same mistake as
deaf children when responding to pointing?
Why or why not?

(C) Character placing:

When telling a story, an ASL signer is likely to name the characters at the beginning
(or whenever they appear) and in doing so, to place them at some location in
space (one to the left, and one to the right, for example). From that point on, the
signer will refer to those locations by pointing instead of repeating the names.
Do these rules for pointing remind you of anything in spoken language?

(D) Handshapes:
While fingerspelling is not a grammatical part of ASL, many signs in ASL are signed
with the handshape of the first letter in the English word -'language' is signed with
the l shape, 'class' with the c shape, and 'water' with a w. The colours blue,
purple, green, orange and yellow are all signed with the same motion, shaking the
initial letter (b, p, g, o, or y) back and forth. 'Apple' is an a shape rotated at cheek
level. At the same time, 'onion' is an x shape moved the same way, so this pattern
does not always hold.
How do these facts impact upon the iconicity debate?

(E) Iconicity in spoken language:

There are iconic elements in ordinary spoken English. Give some examples. In what
ways are similar to and/or different from iconic features of ASL?

8. Why is reflexivity considered to be a special property of human language?

9. What kind of evidence is used to support the idea that language is culturally transmitted?

10. What is the difference between a communication system with productivity and one with
fixed reference?

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 Introduccin a las Ciencias Lingsticas para Anglistas (2014/2015)
Dr. Ramrez Arlandi

11. How did the Gardners try to show that Washoe was not simply repeating signs made by
interacting humans?

12. If Sarah could use a gray plastic shape to convey the meaning of the word red, which
property does her language seem to have?

13. What was considered to be the key element in Kanzis language learning?