Animals and Human Language

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Animals and Human Language

Talking to animals

If these properties make human language such a unique communications system, then it would seem extremely unlikely that other creatures would be able to understand it. Some humans however, do not brhave as if this is the case If it seems difficult to coiceive of animals understanding humanslanguage, then it appears to be even less likely tat an animal would be capable of producing human language.

Arbritrarinness

It`s generally the case that there is no "Natural" connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. The connections is quite arbitrary. This aspect of the relationship between words and objects is described as arbitrarinesss

Displacement

Humans can refer to past and future time. This property of human language is called displacement.

When your pet cat comes up to you calling meow, you are likely to understand this message as relating to that immediate time and place.if you ask your cat what it has been up to, you will probably get the same response. Animal communications seems to be designed exclusively for there here and now

Cultural Transmission

We inherit physical features such as brown eyes and dark hair from our parents, we do not inherit their language. We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes. This process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next is described as cultural transmission.

Communication

We should distinguis between the communicative signals and those that may be unintentionally informative signals.

Properties of human Language

Subtopic

We think that the communicationas the primary functions of humans language, it´s not a distinguishing feature because all creatures communicate in some way, even if it´s not through vocalizations.

Humans are clearly able to reflect and its uses so many technical terms. This is reflexivity.