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Language and living

Beings
presented by: Prof Mr. Maqsood Hasni (P.PhD)
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Contents
1- Can linguistic features reveal time depths as deep as 50,000
years ago?

2- Language: Origin and Meaning

3- Animal Learning, Language, and Cognition

4- Different Human Language and Animal Language

5- Similarities between human and animal language?

6- Chimp Talk Debate: Is It Really Language?

7- Do Animals Have an Innate Sense of Music?

8- Animal Systems of Communication

9- Bird Language: A Path to Awareness

10- The Language of Angels

11- American sign language: as for Christmas

12- How You Compare Human Language Against Animal

Communication?
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Can linguistic features reveal time

depths as deep as 50,000 years
ago?
Posted by Wintz
June 29, 2010

Throughout much of our history language was transitory, existing only

briefly within its speech community. The invention of writing systems
heralded a way of recording some of its recent history, but for the most
part linguists lack the stone tools archaeologists use to explore the
early history of ancient technological industries. The question of how
far back we can trace the history of languages is therefore an
immensely important, and highly difficult, one to answer. However, it’s
not impossible. Like biologists, who use highly conserved genes to
probe the deepest branches on the tree of life, some linguists argue
that highly stable linguistic features hold the promise of tracing
ancestral relations between the world’s languages.

Previous attempts using cognates to infer the relatedness between

languages are generally limited to predictions within the last 6000-
10,000 years. In the present study, Greenhill et al (2010) decided to
examine more stable linguistic features than the lexicon, arguing:

If some typological features are consistently stable within language

families, and resistant to borrowing, then they might hold the key to
uncovering relationships at far deeper levels than previously possible.
For example, Nichols (1994) uses typological features to argue for a
spread of languages and cultures around the Pacific Rim, connecting
Australia, Papua New Guinea, Asia, Russia, Siberia, Alaska and the
western coasts of North and South America. If this is correct, then
these typological features must be reflecting time depths at least 16
000 years and possibly as deep as 50 000 years ago

Still, to really get the most information possible, it’s best to use a large
corpus reflecting the diversity of the world’s languages. This is where
the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) comes in: it contains a
vast body of information about 141 typological features across 2561
languages. It’s a great resource, comparable to the online tools
available for geneticists, with Greenhill et al employing phylogenetic
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analyses of this typological data. They break up their approach into

three parts. First, a network method is applied to the observed
patterns of typological variability in an effort to find any deep signals
within the data. Second, they “quantify the fit of typological and lexical
features onto known family trees for two of the world’s largest and
best-studied language families — Indo European and Austronesia”.
Lastly, they estimate the rates of evolution for typological and lexical
features within these families, subsequently comparing the two.

Using a network technique (see figure below), the authors are able to
visualize the divergence between languages by looking at the length of
the branches, with the box-like structures representing a conflict
between signals when certain typological features support
incompatible language groupings. So if typological features are stable,
then we would expect to see instances where known linguistic history
is displayed in the groupings, whilst having a relatively minimal
amount of conflicting signals. Conversely, those typological features
tending to evolve too rapidly, or undergo diffusion between adjacent
languages, will produce a star-like network — creating many boxes and
lots of clustering.
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Language: Origin and Meaning

John Zerzan

Our time on earth, characterized by the very opposite of those

qualities, is in the deepest need of a reversal of the dialectic that
stripped that wholeness from our life as a species.

The communication with all of existence must have been an exquisite

play of all the senses, reflecting the numberless, nameless varieties of
pleasure and emotion once accessible within us.

To Levy-Bruhl, Durkheim and others, the cardinal and qualitative

difference between the "primitive mind" and ours is the primitive's lack
of detachment in the moment of experience; "the savage mind
totalizes," as Levi-Strauss put it. Of course we have long been
instructed that this original unity was destined to crumble, that
alienation is the province of being human: consciousness depends on
it.

In much the same sense that objectified time has been held to be
essential to consciousness--Hegel called it "the necessary
alienation"--so has language, and equally falsely. Language may be
properly considered the fundamental ideology, perhaps as deep a
separation from the natural world as self-existent time. And if
timelessness resolves the split between spontaneity and
consciousness, languagelessness may be equally necessary.

Adorno, in Minima Moralia, wrote:

"To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but
is in it."

This could stand as an excellent description of humankind as we

existed before the emergence of time and language, before the
division and distancing that exhausted authenticity.
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Language is the subject of this exploration, understood in its virulent

sense. A fragment from Nietzsche introduces its central perspective:

"words dilute and brutalize; words depersonalize; words make the

uncommon common."

Although language can still be described by scholars in such phrases

as

"The most significant and colossal work that the human spirit has
evolved,"

This characterization occurs now in a context of extremity in which we

are forced to call the aggregate of the work of the "human spirit" into
question. Similarly, if in Coward and Ellis' estimation, the most
"significant feature of twentieth-century intellectual development" has
been the light shed by linguistics upon social reality, this focus hints at
how fundamental our scrutiny must yet become in order to
comprehend maimed modern life. It may sound positivist to assert
that language must somehow embody all the "advances" of society,
but in civilization it seems that all meaning is ultimately linguistic; the
question of the meaning of language, considered in its totality, has
become the unavoidable next step.

Earlier writers could define consciousness in a facile way as that which

can be verbalized, or even argue that wordless thought is impossible
(despite the counter-examples of chessplaying or composing music).
But in our present straits, we have to consider anew the meaning of
the birth and character of language rather than assume it to be merely
a neutral, if not benign, inevitable presence. The philosophers are now
forced to recognize the question with intensified interest; Gadamer, for
example:

"Admittedly, the nature of language is one of the most mysterious

questions that exist for man to ponder on."

Ideology, alienation's armored way of seeing, is a domination

embedded in systematic false consciousness. It is easier still to begin
to locate language in these terms if one takes up another definition
common to both ideology and language: namely, that each is a
system of distorted communication between two poles and predicated
upon symbolization.

Like ideology, language creates false separations and objectifications

through its symbolizing power. This falsification is made possible by
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concealing, and ultimately vitiating, the participation of the subject in

the physical world. Modern languages, for example, employ the word
"mind" to describe a thing dwelling independently in our bodies, as
compared with the Sanskrit word, which means "working within,"
involving an active embrace of sensation, perception, and cognition.
The logic of ideology, from active to passive, from unity to separation,
is similarly reflected in the decay of the verb form in general. It is
noteworthy that the much freer and sensuous hunter-gatherer cultures
gave way to the Neolithic imposition of civilization, work and property
at the same time that verbs declined to approximately half of all words
of a language; in modern English, verbs account for less than 10% of
words.

Though language, in its definitive features, seems to be complete from

its inception, its progress is marked by a steadily debasing process.
The carving up of nature, its reduction into concepts and equivalences,
occurs along lines laid down by the patterns of language. And the
more the machinery of language, again paralleling ideology, subjects
existence to itself, the more blind its role in reproducing a society of
subjugation.

Navajo has been termed an "excessively literal" language, from the

characteristic bias of our time for the more general and abstract. In a
much earlier time, we are reminded, the direct and concrete held
sway; there existed a
"plethora of terms for the touched and seen." (Mellersh 1960)
Toynbee noted the "amazing wealth of inflexions" in early languages
and the later tendency toward simplification of language through the
abandonment of inflexions. Cassirer saw the "astounding variety of
terms for a particular action" among American Indian tribes and
understood that such terms bear to each other a relation of
juxtaposition rather than of subordination. But it is worth repeating
once more that while very early on a sumptuous prodigality of symbols
obtained, it was a closure of symbols, of abstract conventions, even at
that stage, which might be thought of as adolescent ideology.

Considered as the paradigm of ideology, language must also be

recognized as the determinant organizer of congnition. As the pioneer
linguist Sapir noted, humans are very much at the mercy of language
concerning what constitutes "social reality." Another seminal
anthropological linguist, Whorf, took this further to propose that
language determines one's entire way of life, including one's thinking
and all other forms of mental activity. To use language is to limit
oneself to the modes of perception already inherent in that language.
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The fact that language is only form and yet molds everything goes to
the core of what ideology is.

It is reality revealed only ideologically, as a stratum separate from us.

In this way language creates, and debases the world. "Human speech
conceals far more than it confides; it blurs much more than it defines;
it distances more than it connects," was George Steiner's conclusion.

More concretely, the essence of learning a language is learning a

system, a model, that shapes and controls speaking. It is easier still to
see ideology on this level, where due to the essential arbitrariness of
the phonological, syntactic, and semantic rules of each, every human
language must be learned. The unnatural is imposed, as a necessary
moment of reproducing an unnatural world.

Even in the most primitive languages, words rarely bear a recognizable

similarity to what they denote; they are purely conventional. Of course
this is part of the tendency to see reality symbolically, which Cioran
referred to as the "sticky symbolic net" of language, an infinite
regression which cuts us off from the world. The arbitrary, self-
contained nature of language's symbolic creates growing areas of false
certainty where wonder, multiplicity and non-equivalence should
prevail. Barthes' depiction of language as "absolutely terrorist" is
much to the point here; he saw that its systematic nature "in order to
be complete needs only to be valid, and not to be true." Language
effects the original split between wisdom and method.

Along these lines, in terms of structure, it is evident that "freedom of

speech" does not exist; grammar is the invisible "thought control" of
our invisible prison. With language we have already accomodated
ourselves to a world of unfreedom.

Reification, the tendency to take the conceptual as the perceived and

to treat concepts as tangible, is as basic to language as it is to
ideology. Language represents the mind's reification of its experience,
that is, an analysis into parts which, as concepts, can be manipulated
as if they were objects. Horkheimer pointed out that ideology consists
more in what people are like--their mental constrictedness, their
complete dependence on associations provided for them--than in what
they believe. In a statement that seems as pertinent to language as
to ideology, he added that people experience everything only within
the conventional framework of concepts.

It has been asserted that reification is necessary to mental functioning,

that the formation of concepts which can themselves be mistaken for
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living properties and relationships does away with the otherwise

almost intolerable experience of relating one experience to another.

Cassirer said of this distancing from experience, "Physical reality

seems to reduce in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances."
Representation and uniformity begin with language, reminding us of
Heidegger's insistence that something extraordinarily important has
been forgotten by civilization.

Civilization is often thought of not as a forgetting but as a

remembering, wherein language enables accumulated knowledge to
be transmitted forward, allowing us to profit from other's experiences
as though they were our own. Perhaps what is forgotten is simply that
other's experiences are not our own, that the civilizing process is thus
a vicarious and inauthentic one. When language, for good reason, is
held to be virtually coterminous with life, we are dealing with another
way of saying that life has moved progressively farther from directly
lived experience.

Language, like ideology, mediates the here and now, attacking direct,
spontaneous connections. A descriptive example was provided by a
mother objecting to the pressure to learn to read: "Once a child is
literate, there is no turning back. Walk through an art museum.
Watch the literate students read the title cards before viewing the
paintings to be sure that they know what to see. Or watch them read
the cards and ignore the paintings entirely...As the primers point out,
reading opens doors. But once those doors are open, it is very difficult
to see the world without looking through them."

The process of transforming all direct experience into the supreme

symbolic expression, language, monopolizes life. Like ideology,
language conceals and justifies, compelling us to suspend our doubts
about its claim to validity. It is at the root of civilization, the dynamic
code of civilization's alienated nature. As the paradigm of ideology,
language stands behind all of the massive legitimation necessary to
hold civilization together. It remains for us to clarify what forms of
nascent domination engendered this justification, made language
necessary as a basic means of repression.

It should be clear, first of all, that the arbitrary and decisive association
of a particular sound with a particular thing is hardly inevitable or
accidental. Language is an invention for the reason that cognitive
processes must precede their expression in language. To assert that
humanity is only human because of language generally neglects the
corollary that being human is the precondition of inventing language.
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The question is how did words first come to be accepted as signs at

all? How did the first symbol originate? Contemporary linguists find
this "such a serious problem that one may despair of finding a way out
of its difficulties." Among the more than ten thousand works on the
origin of language, even the most recent admit that the theoretical
discrepancies are staggering. The question of when language began
has also brought forth extremely diverse opinions. There is no cultural
phenomenon that is more momentous, but no other development
offers fewer facts as to its beginnings. Not surprisingly, Bernard
Campell is far from alone in his judgement that "We simply do not
know, and never will, how or when language began."

Many of the theories that have been put forth as to the origin of
language are trivial:

they explain nothing about the qualitative, intentional changes

introduced by language. The "ding-dong" theory maintains that there
is somehow an innate connection between sound and meaning; the
"pooh-pooh" theory holds that language at first consisted of
ejaculations of surprise, fear, pleasure, pain, etc.; the "ta-ta" theory
posits the imitation of bodily movements as the genesis of language,
and so on among explanations that only beg the question. The
hypothesis that the requirements of hunting made language
necessary, on the other hand, is easily refuted; animals hunt together
without language, and it is often necessary for humans to remain silent
in order to hunt.

Somewhat closer to the mark, I believe, is the approach of

contemporary linguist E.H. Sturtevant: since all intentions and
emotions are involuntarily expressed by gesture, look, or sound,
voluntary communication, such as language, must have been invented
for the purpose of lying or deceiving. In a more circumspect vein, the
philosopher Caws insisted that "truth...is a comparative latecomer on
the linguistic scene, and it is certainly a mistake to suppose that
language was invented for the purpose of telling it."

But it is in the specific social context of our exploration, the terms and
choices of concrete activities and relationships, that more
understanding of the genesis of language must be sought. Olivia
Vlahos judged that the "power of words" must have appeared very
early; "Surely...not long after man had begun to fashion tools shaped
to a special pattern." The flaking or chipping of stone tools, during the
million or two years of Paleolithic life, however, seems much more apt
to have been shared by direct, intimate demonstration than by spoken
directions.
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Nevertheless, the proposition that language arose with the beginnings

of technology--that is, in the sense of division of labor and its
concomitants, such as a standardizing of things and events and the
effective power of specialists over others--is at the heart of the matter,
in my view. It would seem very difficult to disengage the division of
labor--"the source of civilization," in Durkheim's phrase--from language
at any stage, perhaps least of all the beginning. Division of labor
necessitates a relatively complex control of group action; in effect it
demands that the whole community be organized and directed. This
happens through the breakdown of functions previously performed by
everybody, into a progressively greater differentiation of tasks, and
hence of roles and distinctions.

Whereas Vlahos felt that speech arose quite early, in relation to simple
stone tools and their reproduction, Julian Jaynes has raised perhaps a
more interesting question which is assumed in his contrary opinion
that language showed up much later. He asks, how it is, if humanity
had speech had for a couple of million years, that there was virtually
no development of technology? Jaynes's question implies a utilitarian
value inhering in language, a supposed release of latent potentialities
of a positive nature. But given the destructive dynamic of the division
of labor, referred to above, it may be that while language and
technology are indeed linked, they were both successfully resisted for
thousands of generations.

At its origins language had to meet the requirements of a problem that

existed outside language. In light of the congruence of language and
ideology, it is also evident that as soon as a human spoke, he or she
was separated. This rupture is the moment of dissolution of the
original unity between humanity and nature; it coincides with the
initiation of division of labor. Marx recognized that the rise of
ideological consciousness was established by the division of labor;
language was him the primary paradigm of "productive labor." Every
step in the advancement of civilization has meant added labor,
however, and the fundamentally alien reality of productive labor/work
is realized and advanced via language. Ideology receives its substance
from division of labor, and, inseparably, its form from language.

Engels, valorizing labor even more explicitly than Marx, explained the
origin of language from and with labor, the "mastery of nature." He
expressed the essential connection by the phrase, "first labor, after it
and then with it speech." To put it more critically, the artificial
communication which is language was and is the voice of the artificial
separation which is (division of) labor. (In the usual, repressive
parlance, this is phrased positively, of course, in terms of the
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invaluable nature of language in organizing "individual

responsibilities.")

Language was elaborated for the suppression of feelings; as the code

of civilization it expresses the sublimation of Eros, the repression of
instinct, which is the core of civilization. Freud, in the one paragraph
he devoted to the origin of language, connected original speech to
sexual bonding as the instrumentality by which work was made
acceptable as "an equivalence and substitute for sexual activity." This
transference from a free sexuality to work is original sublimation, and
Freud saw language constituted in the establishing of the link between
mating calls and work processes.

The neo-Freudian Lacan carries this analysis further, asserting that the
unconscious is formed by the primary repression of acquisition of
language. For Lacan the unconscious is thus "structured like a
language" and functions lingustically, not instinctively or symbolically
in the traditional Freudian sense.

To look at the problem of origin on a figurative plane, it interesting to

consider the myth of the Tower of Babel. The story of the confounding
of language, like that other story in Genesis, the Fall from the grace of
the Garden, is an attempt to come to terms with the origin of evil. The
splintering of an "original language" into mutually untintelligible may
best be understood as the emergence of symbolic language, the
eclipse of an earlier state of more total and authentic communication.
In numerous traditions of paradise, for example, animals can talk and
humans can understand them.

I have argued elsewhere that the Fall can be understood as a fall into
time. Likewise the failure of the Tower of Babel suggests, as Russell
Fraser put it, "the isolation of man in historical time." But the Fall also
has a meaning in terms of the origin of language. Benjamin found it in
the mediation which is language and the "origin of abstraction, too, as
a faculty of language-mind." "The fall is into language," according to
Norman O. Brown.

Another part of Genesis provides Biblical commentary on an essential

of language, names, and on the notion that naming is an act of
domination. I refer to the creation myth, which includes "and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
thereof." This bears directly on the necessary linguistic component of
the domination of nature: man became master of things only because
he first named them, in the formulation of Dufrenne. As Spengler had
it, "To name anything by a name is to win power over it."
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The beginning of humankind's separation from and conquest of the

world is thus located in the naming of the world. Logos itself as god is
involved in the first naming, which represents the domination of the
deity. The well-known passage is contained in the Gospel of John: "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God."

Returning to the question of the origin of language in real terms, we

also come back to the notion that the problem of language is the
problem of civilization. The anthropologist Lizot noted that the hunter-
gatherer mode exhibited that lack of technology and division of labor
that Jaynes felt must have bespoken an absence of language;
"(Primitive people's) contempt for work and their disinterest in
technological progress per se are beyond question." Furthermore, "the
bulk of recent studies," in Lee's words of 1981, shows the hunter-
gatherers to have been "well nourished and to have (had) abundant
leisure time."

Early humanity was not deterred from language by the pressures of

constant worries about survival; the time for reflection and linguistic
development was available but this path was apparently refused for
many thousands of years. Nor did the conclusive victory of agriculture,
civilization's cornerstone, take place (in the form of the Neolithic
revolution) because of food shortages or population pressures. In fact,
as Lewis Binford has concluded, "The question to be asked is not why
agriculture and food-storage techniques were not developed
everywhere, but why they were developed at all."

The dominance of agriculture, including property ownership, law, cities,

mathematics, surplus, permanent hierarchy and specialization, and
writing, to mention a few of its elements, was no inevitable step in
human "progress"; neither was language itself. The reality of pre-
Neolithic life demonstrates the degradation or defeat involved in what
has been generally seen as an enormous step forward, an admirable
transcending of nature, etc.. In this light, many of the insights of
Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (such as the
linking of progress in instrumental control with regression in affective
experience) are made equivocal by their false conclusion that "Men
have always had to choose between their subjugation to nature or the
subjugation of nature to the Self."

"Nowhere is civilization so perfectly mirrored as in speech," as Pei

commented, and in some very significant ways language has not only
reflected but determined shifts in human life. The deep, powerful
break that was announced by the birth of language prefigured and
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overshadowed the arrival of civilization and history, a mere 10,000

years ago. In the reach of language, "the whole of History stands
unified and complete in the manner of a Natural Order," says Barthes.

Mythology, which, as Cassirer noted, "is from its very beginning

potential religion," can be understood as a function of language,
subject to its requirements like any ideological product. The
nineteenth-century linguist Muller described mythology as a "disease
of language" in just this sense; language deforms thought by its
inability to describe things directly. "Mythology is inevitable, it is
natural, it is an inherent necessity of language...(It is) the dark shadow
which throws upon thought, and which can never disappear till
language becomes entirely commensurate with thought, which it never
will."

It is little wonder, then, that the old dream of a lingua Adamica, a

"real" language consisting not of conventional signs but expressing the
direct, unmediated meaning of things, has been an integral part of
humanity's longing for a lost primeval state. As remarked upon above,
the Tower of Babel is one of the enduring significations of this yearning
to truly commune with each other and nature.

In that earlier (but long enduring) condition nature and society formed
a coherent whole, interconnected by the closest bonds. The step from
participation in the totality of nature to religion involved a detaching of
forces and beings into outward, inverted existences. This separation
took the form of deities, and the religious practitioner, the shaman,
was the first specialist.

The decisive mediations of mythology and religion are not, however,

the only profound cultural developments underlying our modern
estrangement. Also in the Upper Paleolithic era, as the species
Neanderthal gave way to Cro-Magnon (and the brain actually shrank in
size), art was born. In the celebrated cave paintings of roughly 30,000
years ago is found a wide assortment of abstract signs; the symbolism
of late Paleolithic art slowly stiffens into the much more stylized forms
of the Neolithic agriculturalists. During this period, which is either
synonymous with the beginnings of language or registers its first real
dominance, a mounting unrest surfaced. John Pfeiffer described this in
terms of the erosion of the egalitarian hunter-gatherer traditions, as
Cro-Magnon established its hegemony. Whereas there was "no trace
of rank" until the Upper Paleolithic, the emerging division of labor and
its immediate social consequences demanded a disciplining of those
resisting the gradual approach of civilization. As a formalizing,
indoctrinating device, the dramatic power of art fulfilled this need for
 15

cultural coherence and the continuity of authority. Language, myth,

religion and art thus advanced as deeply "political" conditions of social
life, by which the artificial media of symbolic forms replaced the
directly-lived quality of life before division of labor. From this point on,
humanity could no longer see reality face to face; the logic of
domination drew a veil over play, freedom, affluence.

At the close of the Paleolithic Age, as a decreased proportion of verbs

in the language reflected the decline of unique and freely chosen acts
in consequence of division of labor, language still possessed no
tenses. Although the creation of a symbolic world was the condition
for the existence of time, no fixed differentiations had developed
before hunter-gatherer life was displaced by Neolithic farming. But
when every verb shows a tense, language is "demanding lip service to
time even when time is furthest of our thoughts." (Van Orman Quine
1960) From this point one can ask whether time exists apart from
grammar. Once the structure of speech incorporates time and is
thereby animated by it at every expression, division of labor
conclusively destroyed an earlier reality. With Derrida, one can
accurately refer to "language as the origin of history." Language itself
is a repression, and along its progress repression gathers--as ideology,
as work--so as to generate historical time. Without language all of
history would disappear.

Pre-history is pre-writing; writing of some sort is the signal that

civilization has begun. "Once gets the impression," Freud wrote in The
Future of an Illusion, "that civilization is something which was imposed
on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain
possession of the means of power and coercion." If the matter of time
and language can seem problematic, writing as a stage of language
makes it appearance contributing to subjugation in rather naked
fashion. Freud could have been legitimately pointed to written
language as the lever by which civilization was imposed and
consolidated.

By about 10,000 B.C., extensive division of labor had produced the

kind of social control reflected by cities and temples. The earliest
writings are records of taxes, laws, terms of labor servitude. This
objectified domination thus originated from the practical needs of
political economy. An increased use of letters and tablets soon
enabled those in charge to reach new heights of power and conquest,
as exemplified in the new form of government commanded by
Hammurabi of Babylon. As Levi-Strauss put it, writing "seems to favor
rather the exploitation than the enlightenment of mankind..Writing, on
this its first appearance in our midst, had allied itself with falsehood."
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Language at this juncture becomes the representation of

representation, in hieroglyphic and ideographic writing and then in
phonetic-alphabetic writing. The progress of symbolization, from the
symbolizing of words, to that of syllables, and finally to letters in an
alphabet, imposed an increasingly irresistable sense of order and
control. And in the reification that writing permits, language is no
longer tied to a speaking subject or community of discourse, but
creates an autonomous field from which every subject can be absent.

In the contemporary world, the avant-garde of art has, most

noticeably, performed the gestures of refusal of the prison of
language. Since Mallarme, a good deal of modernist poetry and prose
has moved against the taken-for-grantedness of normal speech. To
the question "Who is speaking?" Mallarme answered, "Language is
speaking." After this reply, and especially since the explosive period
around World War I when Joyce, Stein and others attempted a new
syntax as well as a new vocabulary, the restraints and distortions of
language have been assaulted wholesale in literature. Russian
futurists, Dada (e.g. Hugo Ball's efforts in the 1920s to create "poetry
without words"), Artaud, the Surrealists and lettristes were among the
more exotic elements of a general resistance to language.

The Symbolist poets, and many who could be called their descendants,
held that defiance of society also includes defiance of its language.
But inadequacy in the former arena precluded success in the latter,
bringing one to ask whether avant-garde strivings can be anything
more than abstract, hermetic gestures. Language, which at any given
moment embodies the ideology of a particular culture, must be ended
in order to abolish both categories of estrangement; a project of some
considerable dimensions, let us say. That literary texts (e.g.
Finnegan's Wake, the poetry of e.e. cummings) breaks the rules of
language seems mainly to have the paradoxical effect of evoking the
rules themselves. By permitting the free play of ideas about language,
society treats these ideas as mere play.

The massive amount of lies--official, commercial and otherwise--is

perhaps in itself sufficient to explain why Johnny Can't Read or Write,
why illiteracy is increasing in the metropole. In any case, it is not only
that "the pressure on language has gotten very great," according to
Canetti, but that "unlearning" has come "to be a force in almost every
field of thought," in Robert Harbison's estimation.

Today "incredible" and "awesome" are applied to the most commonly

trivial and boring; it is no accident that powerful and shocking words
barely exist anymore. The deterioration of language mirrors a more
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general estrangement; it has become almost totally external to us.

From Kafka to Pinter silence it is a fitting voice of our times. "Few
books are forgivable. Black on the canvas, silence on the screen, an
empty white sheet fo paper, are perhaps feasible," as R.D. Laing put it
so well. Meanwhile, the structuralists--Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault,
Lacan, and Derrida--have been almost entirely occupied with the
duplicity language in their endless exegetical burrowings into it. They
have virtually renounced the project of extracting meaning from
language.

I am writing (obviously) enclosed in language, aware that language

reifies the resistance to reification. As T.S. Eliot's Sweeney explains,
"I've gotta use words when I talk to you." One can imagine replacing
the imprisonment of time with a brilliant present--only by imagining a
world without division of labor, without that divorce from nature from
which all ideology and authority accrue. We couldn't live in this world
without language and that is just how profoundly we must transform
this world.

Words bespeak sadness; they are used to soak up the emptiness of

unbridled time. We have all had that desire to go further, deeper than
words, the feeling of wanting only to be done with all the talk, knowing
that being allowed to live coherently erases the need to formulate
coherence.

There is a profound truth to the notion that "lovers need no words."

The point is that we must have a world of lovers, a world of the face-to-
face, in which even names can be forgotten, a world which knows that
enchantment is the opposite of ignorance. Only a politics that undoes
language and time and is thus visionary to the point of voluptuousness
has any meaning.
 18

Animal Learning, Language, and

Cognition
Current Research Projects

Jane Goodall Institute

A foundation developed by Jane Goodall and includes much about her

life and work. She began studying chimpanzees in the wild in 1960 in
Gombe, Tanganyika (now Tanzania). In 1975, she established the Jane
Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation to
promote animal research throughout the world.

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh at the Language Research Center - GA State

University

The home page of the Language Research Center at Georgia State

University where Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh and
others work with great apes and human children comparing and
contrasting language development. This is a world renowned
international research facility on many acres of land outside the city of
Atlanta, GA.
 19

Click on "The Apes" for detailed biographies, pictures, research

findings and more on the primates they are currently working with.
Included are the Pan troglodytes - Lana, Mercury, Sherman and Austin;
and the Bonobos, including the famous "Kanzi" that Sue Savage-
Rumbaugh has written extensively about. Biographies are also
included of Matata, Neema and others.

The Center's site also includes research studies and reports on such
topics as Kanzi's understanding of word order, sentence structure,
grammar, etc.

A list of current and past publications is also available. Some of these

reports are in full-text on-line for downloading.

Lynn Miles and the Chantek Foundation

Chantek is a twenty-two year old male orangutan who was cross-
fostered, enculturated and taught to use sign language by
anthropologist Dr. H. Lynn Miles. The mission of the Foundation is to
support cultural research with Chantek; to understand the nature of
orangutan communicative ability and intelligence; to foster the
development of orangutan and other great ape persons in a Primate
Cultural Center; to promote orangutan conservation through
awareness of Chantek's abilities; and, to develop creative education
about building a bridge between our species. Dr. Miles work began
more than 20 years ago, but was interrupted for about 10 years. She
has recently resumed her research and work with Chantek.

Rob Shumaker and the Orang-utan Language Project at the National

Zoo
Visit the Think Tank at the National Zoo where Shumaker works with
Orangutans - Indah, Azy and others on the computer teaching
language comprehension through the use of lexigrams (symbols).

Francine "Penny" Patterson, The Gorilla Foundation and Project Koko

A comprehensive site on the work of Penny Patterson and team with
the world renown gorilla "Koko." The site includes information on
gorillas, detailed photographs of their work with the apes, Koko,
Michael and Ndume. Also includes the elaborate artwork of Koko and
Michael and much more.

You can also communicate with Koko and see Koko signing.

Roger and Deborah Fouts and the Chimpanzee and Human

Communication Institute (CHCI) at Central Washington University
 20

Roger and Debbie Fouts carries on the original work of Alex and
Beatrice Gardner with the chimpanzees, Washoe, Loulis, Dar, Moja and
Tatu. The site provides pictures and biographical sketches of each
primate. Also includes a listing of their past and ongoing research at
the Institute, along with their future plans.

Matsuzawa Tetsuro and the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto

University, Japan
The home of researcher Matsuzawa Tetsuro who has been working
with the chimpanzee "Ai" since 1978. Ai is learning linguistic skills and
knows how to write the alphabets. She also has her own home page at:
http://www.pri.kyoto-u-ac.jp/ai/index-E.htm. You can access it from
the above home page. Go to "Topics" in the right bottom column and
click on chimpanzee Ai. The page includes her biography, friends,
favorite foods, art - and pictures of her new baby boy born in April
2000.

Irene Pepperberg and the Alex Foundation

The work of Dr. Irene Pepperberg and her African Grey parrots, "Alex"
and others. Alex can count, identify objects, shapes, colors and
materials. Alex also understands concepts of same and different.
Pepperberg believes that Alex will be able to read some day. Alex can
articulate language better than some humans.

The N'Kisi Project

A talking parrot with telepathic abilities. You can hear an audioclip of
N'Kisi talking in a language teaching session with trainer and
researcher Aimee Morgana.

The Language and Culture of Crows

Thisi site has collected extensive data on crows, their culture, the
language they speak and more.

Dr. Ken Marten and Project Delphis - Dolphin Cognition Research

Located in Kailua, Hawaii, the project is devoted to advancing scientific
understanding and public awareness of the dolphin mind. The site is
very comprehensive, showing you their work and research with photos
and video clippings of the dolphins at work and play. The dolphins also
have an underwater touch screen that allows them to interact with
computers. See the dolphins make underwater bubble sculptures. The
site also includes an extensive bibliography.

John C. Lilly and Interspecies Communication Between Man and

Dolphin
 21

Dr. Lilly, MD, has been conducting dolphin communication research for
23 years. His lab is in the Virgin Islands at the Human/Dolphin
Foundation. He is a physician and psychoanalyst, specializing in
biophysics, neurophysiology, electronics, computer theory, and
neuroanatomy. He is inventor of the isolation tank method of exploring
consciousness. This work has led him to interspecies communication
research projects between dolphins and humans. He was the first to
believe that dolphins could talk. Listen to Peter, the dolphin, saying
"hello."

Rupert Sheldrake
Dr. Sheldrake is author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are
Coming Home, and has written and conducted research extensively on
other unexplained powers of animals.

Animal language controversy

Excerpt from Chapter 6 of Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin

and Catherine Johnson

Do Animals TALK To EACH OTHER THE WAY PEOPLE Do?

Those are fighting words in the fields of animal and linguistic research.
A lot of people are emotionally invested in the idea that language is
the one thing that makes human beings unique. Language is
sacrosanct. It's the last boundary standing between man and beast.

Now even this final boundary is being challenged. Con Slobodchikoff at

Northern Arizona University has done some of the most amazing
studies in animal communication and cognition. Using sonograms to
analyze the distress calls of Gunnison's prairie dog, one of five species
of prairie dogs found in the U.S. and Mexico, he has found that prairie
dog colonies have a communication system that includes nouns, verbs,
and adjectives. They can tell one another what kind of predator is
approaching -- man, hawk, coyote, dog (noun) -- and they can tell each
other how fast it's moving (verb). They can say whether a human is
carrying a gun or not.

They can also identify individual coyotes and tell one another which
one is coming. They can tell the other prairie dogs that the
approaching coyote is the one who likes to walk straight through the
colony and then suddenly lunge at a prairie dog who's gotten too far
away from the entrance to his burrow, or the one who likes to lie
patiently by the side of a hole for an hour and wait for his dinner to
appear. If the prairie dogs are signaling the approach of a person, they
 22

can tell one another something -- about what color clothing the person
is wearing, as well as something about his size and shape (adjectives).
They also have a lot of other calls that have not been deciphered.

Dr. Slobodchikoff was able to interpret the calls by videotaping

everything, analyzing the sound spectrum, and then watching the
video to see what the prairie dog making a distress call was reacting to
when he made it. He also watched to see how the other prairie dogs
responded. That was an important clue, because he found that the
prairie dogs reacted differently to different warnings. If the warning
was about a hawk making a dive, all the prairie dogs raced to their
burrows and vanished down into holes. But if the hawk was circling
overhead, the prairie dogs stopped foraging, stood up in an alert
posture, and waited to see what happened next. If the call warned
about a human, the prairie dogs all ran for their burrows no matter
how fast the human was coming.

Dr. Slobodchikoff also found evidence that prairie dogs aren't born
knowing the calls, the way a baby is born knowing how to cry. They
have to learn them. He bases this on the fact that the different prairie
dog colonies around Flagstaff all have different dialects. Since
genetically these animals are almost identical, Dr. Slobodchikoff
argues that genetic differences can't explain the differences in the
calls. That means the calls have been created by the individual
colonies and passed on from one generation to the next.

Is this "real" language?

A philosopher of language might say no, but the case against animal
language is getting weaker. Different linguists have somewhat
different definitions of language, but everyone agrees that language
has to have meaning, productivity (you can use the same words to
make an infinite number of now communications), and displacement
(you can use language to talk about things that aren't present).

Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real
world, so it definitely has meaning.

Different Human Language And

Animal Language
 23

Difference Between Human And Animal Communication

The importance of communication between animals cannot be
underestimated. Through communication, animals are able to
concentrate on finding food, avoiding their enemies, mating and caring
for their young. The study of communication between animals and
humans is a never ending fascination and a way to learn more about
ourselves.

The development of human communication is what makes us exclusive

to any living thing on this planet. The ways in which we communicate
with one another is uniquely important in our everyday lives. Without
it's presence, the world would have no development, holding the same
appearance as one million years ago. We would be lacking a sense of
society and most probably be still in the Stone Age. The mystery of the
development of human language constitutes how we are uniquely
human from other animals. Human beings have a daily working
vocabulary of 1000 words, and with our knowledge on how to use
grammatical

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rules is what makes our sense of communication moreVerbal
communication between humans is the central, most relevant factor in
a sophisticated society. People have evolved into expressive and
capable members of society. The human language has been around for
five thousand years and it is apparent that language has been complex
long before that. The human language is quite problematic as
grammar and syntax play a major role in defining language. Animals
have an extremely primitive way of communicating compared to
humans, and the way in which we communicate. Animals cannot
verbally speak like us humans and studies verify this.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

It is the existence of human communication that has made the world

the place it is today. Through communication, human beings have
created skyscrapers, long bridges to complicated forms of
transportation. We have also had the ability to start world destruction
and encourage world peace. It is through learning how to...
 24

Apes, cats and dogs atavistically are equipped with a great variety of
gestures, signals and reactions to express emotions and desires. Learn
how human body language reflects animal behavior.

Smiles and Hands as Used by Humans and Apes

Humans and apes alike belong to the species of primates and have a
very similar genetic make up. Therefore it is not surprising to learn that
both have a variety of body language expressions in common. Unlike
other animals, apes have hands and are capable of making gestures to
communicate with each other. Apes are also able to learn signals and
to be trained. In this case, the imitation process is reversed. Whereas
human body language may imitate ape behavior, it's also true that
humans can teach apes to 'ape' human gestures.

The Three Apes

For more in depth information about ape body language consults: Ape
Gestures and Language by Amy S. Pollick and Frans B.M. de Waal of
Atlanta University. The study focuses on how human language may
have its origin in animal body language rather than in verbal signals,
but it contains a lot of gesture explanations.

An international gesture in human body language is that of beggars,

who sit or stand with their arm outstretched, open palm up, asking for
money or food. Apes are prone to make a lot of hand and body
gestures. An ape which stretches out its open palm is either also
asking for food or signaling an invitation for sex to the opposite sex.

An outstretched hand in a human, often as preliminary to a hand

shake, signals openness and friendliness. An ape doing the same will
make a peace offer or just signal that it is not aggressive.

Humans automatically raise their hands and cover their ears to

indicate too much noise or that they don't want to hear any more of
what's said to them or what's going on around them. Apes do exactly
the same.
 25

When apes gesture, they use their right hand. It's controlled by the left
side of the brain, which in humans, is the location of the nerve center
for language. It would be interesting to find out if there are left handed
apes where the brain functions would be reversed.

Apes have a vivid facility for facial expressions. For most other
animals, showing their teeth is a gesture of aggression. Not so for
apes. Like humans, apes can smile. It's a sign of submission, of
wanting to be friendly and non-threatening. Apes also can emit a
lopsided smirk by pulling up only one side of the mouth. Just as in
humans a smirk indicates insolence and arrogance.

Flared nostrils express dissatisfaction. Humans take in a deep breath,

their nostrils extend and they indicate by the gesture : I've had
enough.' Apes do the same. Flared nostrils in an ape indicate that they
are about to attack.

Humans express a wide range of emotions with their eyes. Sadness,

joy and fear are shown by opening eyes wide, narrowing them or half
closing them. Apes have huge eyes and just like humans, are able to
express their feelings and emotions through them. Like no other
animal, apes are even able to roll their eyes.

Cockyness and Anger in Humans and Cats

Felines do not emit as refined signals as apes and of course they can't
make gestures, because they have no hands. However, there are some
body language characteristics observed in humans which can also be
seen in cats . Most notably are the expressions of cockiness and anger.

Humans express self satisfaction, pride or cockiness by walking very

erect and throwing their head back and thrusting the chin forward. The
equivalent behavior, typical to cats, is the stalking or prancing around,
head up and tail in the air.

When humans are shocked or extremely frightened, the hair on their

arms and sometimes their neck literally stands on end. The same
applies to felines. Adrenaline rush causes the phenomenon. Raised
hackles in humans as well as in cats signify fear, imminent aggression
or shock. The same applies to dilated pupils. The human eye tends to
expand involuntarily in extreme situations just as it does in cats.
 26

Fake Smile and Grovelling in Humans and Dogs

Take a look at the fake smile in humans. The teeth are bared with the
lips stretched as far as they will go, but the smile does not reach the
eyes. As opposed to apes, dogs signal aggression when they bare their
teeth. The interpretation covers impatience, aggression and defense.
Dogs showing their teeth and even emitting a growl at the same time,
are about to attack. Grinding the teeth, audibly or not, means the
same. Dogs move their mandibles and sometimes salivate in the same
way.

Dogs show submission by turning on their back and throwing the paws
up in the air. Although human body language does not go to that
extreme, the equivalent is raising and opening both arms, often
accompanied by a shrug.

Humans show humbleness or a plea for forgiveness by grovelling. The

other person is approached with the head bowed and the feet
shuffling. Who hasn't seen a grovelling dog? Belly on the ground, head
lowered, paws humbly creeping forward. Humans do walk upright, so
there is no belly creeping, but otherwise their body language in the
same situation mirror's dog-behavior.

On the whole it's quite amazing how much human body language
resembles in many ways the means of non verbal communication of
animals.

Read more:
http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/21608.aspx#ix
zz1CalSLWxl
 27

Similarities between human and

animal language?
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
Animals use 'language' in a very simple way, to indicate the here-and-
now. I sincerely doubt that a series of squawks, squeals, miaos, barks
or any other system used by animals would be able to capture the
complexity of a sentence like 'Last week I felt scared due to the
incident that occurred with a large crow who felt that I was
encroaching on his territory and therefore he felt compelled to attack
me'. Even if we broke that sentence down into simple themes, it would
still be too complicated, particularly with the use of time as a reporting
factor.

Another difference is that I doubt an animal could use some sort of

language code to reflect on that very same code; in other words, to
use language to talk about language (aka 'metalanguage'). The brain
capacities of humans versus other animals means that our language
system (production, comprehension etc) will always be more intricate
than that of animals, even if we do manage to teach a few gorillas to
use sign language.

By Sherry Horton Blake

Early humans would have found it to their advantage to understand, at

least in part, the communication between animals as it may have given
them clues as to the movement of the animals in order to facilitate
trapping or hunting the animals for food and also as to whether the
animals posed a threat to them. The fact that much of the
communication between animals is similar to communication that
takes place between humans would likely have helped early humans in
understanding animal communication. In what ways, however, are
animal communications similar to human communications?
 28

The planum temporale, a component of Wernicke's area of the brain,

is used in human communication. The PT is also used by humans who
are born deaf to learn sign language. Research being done at Mt. Sinai
School of Medicine has revealed that the PT in chimpanzees is very
similar in anatomy and size to that in humans. Some scientists think,
however, that the PT is not related to language in chimpanzees as their
brains have not evolved to that point. However, there are many other
indicators of similarities in animal communication and human
communication.

In the realm of body language and facial gestures, one can easily see
similarities in the way animals communicate and humans
communicate. For example, many facial gestures in humans are also
seen in chimps. Facial gestures that humans make while
communicating (i.e. grimaces, smiles) may date from primitive times
and may, in fact, be reflexes that evolved from our ape ancestors. For
example, blind babies smile at the same stage of development as
babies who can see which points to this being a reflex that came about
to enhance bonding between mother and baby. There are similarities
also in hand gestures. Chimps demonstrate with an open hand when
they see something they want, particularly food. This is a universal
gesture among humans when asking for food.

Honeybees show similarities with human communication in that they

have the potential for an infinite number of different types of
messages, as do humans in language, although the messages of
honeybees are confined to one subject. Birds show a similarity in
communication with humans in that their communication is both verbal
and functional (part learned, part hereditary). Some birds have a
similarity with humans in that they speak in different dialects.
Chaffinch, at the age of one year, learn the dialect of the area where
they live and breed.

Vervet monkeys show as astonishing amount of similarity

By Emma Walker

Chimpanzees greet each other by touching hands. Elephants show

affection by entwining trunks. Gorillas stick out their tongues

By Tim Rosanelli

Cesar Millan, AKA the dog whisperer, uses his skills to rehabilitate dogs
by training humans
 29

By Maria Fairbrother

Countless urban legends and Native American tales tell of the bond
between human and animal. Some of the first documented

By Janet Farricelli

The ease encountered in training animals can be mainly attributed to

the fact that as humans we share with animals many

By Douglas Black

Communication by definition means the ability to send information to

another, via any given form of medium.

Chimp Talk Debate: Is It Really

Language?
By George Johnson

PANBANISHA, a Bonobo chimpanzee who has become something of a

star among animal language researchers, was strolling through the
Georgia woods with a group of her fellow primates -- scientists at the
Language Research Center at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Suddenly, the chimp pulled one of them aside. Grabbing a special
keyboard of the kind used to teach severely retarded children to
communicate, she repeatedly pressed three symbols -- "Fight," "Mad,"
"Austin" -- in various combinations.

Austin is the name of another chimpanzee at the center. Dr. Sue

Savage-Rumbaugh, one of Panbanisha's trainers, asked, "Was there a
fight at Austin's house?"
 30

"Waa, waa, waa" said the chimpanzee, in what Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh

took as a sign of affirmation. She rushed to the building where Austin
lives and learned that earlier in the day two of the chimps there, a
mother and her son, had fought over which got to play with a
computer and joystick used as part of the training program. The son
had bitten his mother, causing a ruckus that, Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh
surmised, had been overheard by Panbanisha, who lived in another
building about 200 feet away. As Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh saw it,
Panbanisha had a secret she urgently wanted to tell.

A decade and a half after the claims of animal language researchers

were discredited as exaggerated self-delusions, Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh
is reporting that her chimpanzees can demonstrate the rudimentary
comprehension skills of 2 1/2-year-old children. According to a series of
recent papers, the Bonobo, or pygmy, chimps, which some scientists
believe are more humanlike and intelligent than the common
chimpanzees studied in the earlier, flawed experiments, have learned
to understand complex sentences and use symbolic language to
communicate spontaneously with the outside world.

"She had never put those three lexigrams together," Dr. Savage-
Rumbaugh said, referring to the keyboard symbols with which the
animals are trained. She found the incident, which occurred last
month, particularly gratifying because the chimp seemed to be using
the symbols not to demand food, which is usually the case in these
experiments, but to gossip.

In a book to be published later this year, "Apes, Language and the

Human Mind: Philosophical Primatology" (Routledge), Dr. Savage-
Rumbaugh and her co-authors, Dr. Stuart Shanker, a philosopher at
York University in Toronto, and Dr. Talbot Taylor, a linguist at the
College of William and Mary in Virginia, argue that the feats of the
chimps at the Language Research Center are so impressive that
scientists must now re-evaluate some of their most basic ideas about
the nature of language.

Most language experts dismiss experiments like the ones with

Panbanisha as exercises in wishful thinking. "In my mind this kind of
research is more analogous to the bears in the Moscow circus who are
trained to ride unicycles," said Dr. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies language
acquisition in children. "You can train animals to do all kinds of
amazing things." He is not convinced that the chimps have learned
anything more sophisticated than how to press the right buttons in
 31

order to get the hairless apes on the other side of the console to cough
up M & M's, bananas and other tidbits of food.

Dr. Noam Chomsky, the M.I.T. linguist whose theory that language is
innate and unique to people forms the infrastructure of the field, says
that attempting to teach linguistic skills to animals is irrational -- like
trying to teach people to flap their arms and fly.

"Humans can fly about 30 feet -- that's what they do in the Olympics,"
he said in an interview. "Is that flying? The question is totally
meaningless. In fact the analogy to flying is misleading because when
humans fly 30 feet, the organs they're using are kind of homologous to
the ones that chickens and eagles use." Arms and wings, in other
words, arise from the same branch of the evolutionary tree. "Whatever
the chimps are doing is not even homologous as far as we know," he
said. There is no evidence that the chimpanzee utterances emerge
from anything like the "language organ" Dr. Chomsky believes resides
only in human brains. This neural wiring is said to be the source of the
universal grammar that unites all languages.

But some philosophers, like Dr. Shanker, complain that the linguists
are applying a double standard: they dismiss skills -- like putting
together a noun and a verb to form a two-word sentence -- that they
consider nascent linguistic abilities in a very young child.

"The linguists kept upping their demands and Sue kept meeting the
demands," said Dr. Shanker. "But the linguists keep moving the goal
post."

Following Dr. Chomsky, most linguists argue that special neural

circuitry needed for language evolved after man's ancestors split from
those of the chimps millions of years ago. As evidence they note how
quickly children, unlike chimpanzees, go from cobbling together two-
word utterances to effortlessly spinning out complex sentences with
phrases embedded within phrases like Russian dolls. But Dr. Shanker
and his colleagues insist that Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh's experiments
suggest that there is not an unbridgeable divide between humans and
the rest of the animal kingdom, as orthodox linguists believe, but
rather a gradation of linguistic skills.

In a forthcoming book, "The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A

Philosophical Journey Into the Brain" (M. I. T. Press), Dr. Paul
Churchland, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of
California at San Diego, says linguists should take Dr. Savage-
Rumbaugh's experiments as a challenge. He argues that the jury is still
 32

out: the rules for constructing sentences might turn out to be not so
much hard-wired as a result of learning -- by people and potentially by
their chimpanzee relatives.

Animal language research fell into disrepute in the late 1970's when
"talking" chimps like Washoe and the provocatively named Nim
Chimpsky were exposed as unintentional frauds. Because chimpanzees
lack the vocal apparatus to make a variety of modulated sounds, the
animals were taught a vocabulary of hand signs -- an approach first
suggested in the 18th century by the French physician Julien Offray de
La Mettrie. In appearances on television talk shows, trainers claimed
the chimps could construct sentences of several words. But upon
closer examination, scientists found strong evidence that the chimps
had simply learned to please their teachers by contorting their hands
into all kinds of configurations. And the trainers, straining to find
examples of linguistic communication, thought they saw words among
the wiggling, like children seeing pictures in the clouds.

In a widely quoted paper in the journal Science, "Can an Ape Create a

Sentence?" Nim Chimpsky's trainer, Dr. Herbert Terrace, a Columbia
University psychologist, reluctantly concluded that the answer was no.

A chimp might learn to connect a hand sign with an item of food,

skeptics like Dr. Terrace argued, but this could be a matter of simple
conditioning, like Pavlov's dogs learning to salivate at the sound of a
bell. Most importantly, there was no evidence that the chimps had
acquired a generative grammar -- the ability to string words together
into sentences of arbitrary length and complexity.

As a young veteran of the original animal language experiments, Dr.

Savage-Rumbaugh decided to try a different approach. To eliminate
the ambiguity of hand signs, she used a keyboard with dozens of
buttons marked with geometric symbols.

In elaborate exercises beginning in the mid 1970's, she and her

colleagues taught common chimpanzees and bonobos to associate
symbols with a variety of things, people and places in and around the
laboratory. The smartest chimps even seemed to learn abstract
categories, identifying pictures of objects as either tools or food. Dr.
Savage-Rumbaugh reported that two of the chimps learned to use
symbols to communicate with each other. Pecking away at the
keyboard, one would tell a companion where to find a key that would
liberate a banana for them both to share.
 33

Most impressive of all was a bonobo named Kanzi. After futilely trying
to train Kanzi's adopted mother to use the keyboard, the researchers
found that the 2 1/2-year-old chimp, who apparently had been
eavesdropping all along, had picked up an impressive vocabulary on
his own. Kanzi was taught not in laboriously structured training
sessions but on walks through the 50 acres of forest surrounding the
language center. By the time he was 6 years old, Kanzi had acquired a
vocabulary of 200 symbols and was constructing what might be taken
as rudimentary sentences consisting of a word combined with a
gesture or occasionally of two or three words. Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh
became convinced that exposure to language must start early and that
the lessons should be driven by the animal's curiosity.

Compared with other chimps, Kanzi's utterances are striking, but they
are still far from human abilities. Kanzi is much better at responding to
vocal commands like "Take off Sue's shoe." In one particularly
arresting feat, recorded on videotape, Kanzi was told, "Give the dog a
shot." The chimpanzee picked up a hypodermic syringe lying on the
ground in front of him, pulled off the cap and injected a toy stuffed
dog.

Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh's critics say there is nothing surprising about

chimpanzees or even dogs and parrots associating vocal sounds with
objects. Kanzi has been trained to associate the sound "dog" with the
furry thing in front of him and has been programmed to carry out a
stylized routine when he hears "shot." But does the chimp really
understand what he is doing?

Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh insists that experiments using words in novel

contexts show that the chimps are not just responding to sounds in a
knee-jerk manner. It is true, she says, that Kanzi was initially aided by
vocal inflections, hand gestures, facial expressions and other
contextual clues. But once it had mastered a vocabulary, the bonobo
could properly respond to 70 percent of unfamiliar sentences spoken
by a trainer whose face was concealed.

None of this is very persuasive to linguists for whom the acid test of
language is not comprehension but performance, the ability to use
grammar to generate ever more complex sentences.

Dr. Terrace says Kanzi, like the disappointing Nim Chimpsky, is simply
"going through a bag of tricks in order to get things." He is not
impressed by comparisons to human children. "If a child did exactly
what the best chimpanzee did, the child would be thought of as
disturbed," Dr. Terrace said.
 34

The scientists at the Language Research Center are "studying some

very complicated cognitive processes in chimpanzees," Dr. Terrace
said. "That says an awful lot about the evolution of intelligence. How
do chimpanzees think without language, how do they remember
without language? Those are much more important questions than
trying to reproduce a few tidbits of language from a chimpanzee trying
to get rewards."

Attempting to shift the fulcrum of the debate over performance versus

comprehension, Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh argues that the linguists have
things backward: "Comprehension is the route into language," she
says. In her view it is easier to take an idea already in one's mind and
translate it into a grammatical string of words than to decipher a
sentence spoken by another whose intentions are unknown.

Dr. Shanker, the York University philosopher, believes that the

linguists' objections reveal a naive view of how language works. When
Kanzi gives the dog a shot, he might well be relying on all kinds of
contextual clues and subtle gestures from the speaker, but that, Dr.
Shanker argues, is what people do all the time.

Following the ideas of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, he argues

that language is not just a matter of encoding and decoding strings of
arbitrary symbols. It is a social act that is always embedded in a
situation.

But trotting out Wittgenstein and his often obscure philosophy is a way
of sending many linguists bolting for the exits. "If higher apes were
incapable of anything beyond the trivialities that have been shown in
these experiments, they would have been extinct millions of years
ago," Dr. Chomsky said. "If you want to find out about an organism you
study what it's good at. If you want to study humans you study
language. If you want to study pigeons you study their homing instinct.
Every biologist knows this. This research is just some kind of
fanaticism."

There is a suspicion among some linguists and cognitive scientists that

animal language experiments are motivated as much by ideological as
scientific concerns -- by the conviction that intelligent behavior is not
hard-wired but learnable, by the desire to knock people off their self-
appointed thrones and champion the rights of downtrodden animals.

"I know what it's like," Dr. Terrace said. "I was once stung by the same
bug. I really wanted to communicate with a chimpanzee and find out
what the world looks like from a chimpanzee's point of view."
 35

GRAPHIC: Photos: Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Panbanisha, at

keyboard of symbols.; Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh and Kanzi, outdoors with
the keyboard. (AERA); Above, Kanzi uses the keyboard to identify a
picture shown to him by a researcher. Below, Kanzi takes an English
comprehension test, wearing earphones while a researcher reads
words for which he must select the appropriate picture or keyboard
symbol. (Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh/Language Research Center,
Georgia State University) (pg. C10)
 36

Do Animals Have an Innate Sense of

Music?
Jen Mapes,

nationalgeographic.com
January 5, 2001

Listen closely the next time you hear a bird singing, and you may hear
rhythms and patterns strikingly similar to those found in human music.
Scientists studying these patterns argue that the nature of music may
be deeper than previously thought—and may suggest an inherent
knowledge of music that is shared by many animals, including humans,
birds, and whales.

In the last half-century, Judy Collins has sung with humpback whales
and CDs with titles like “Sounds of the Rainforest” have flown off store
shelves. The business of “natural music” is booming.

But are these soothing sounds truly music? Or are they simply
biological functions of the animals that create them?

A recent Science article suggests that not only are natural sounds such
as whale and bird songs music, but that their songs may be part of a
“universal music” that provides an intuitive musical concept to many
animals—including humans.

“We can look at the evidence and we can give more credit to animals,”
said article co-author Jelle Atema, a biology professor at Boston
University who has studied prehistoric flutes. “And we can look at
humans and be less impressed with humans.”

The flutes, made of bone and created up to

57,000 years ago, indicate the importance of
music to our cave-dwelling ancestors, explained
Atema. “The musical instruments were more
complex than the hunting tools.”
Humpback whale
Photograph by C.
Wolcott Henry III/NG
Image Collection
ENLARGE >>
 37

The similarities between human and animal sounds and the innate
desire to create music that the similarities suggest is a topic now being
explored by the evolving field of biomusicology.

SOUND OR MUSIC?

There seems to be little question that nature can create aesthetically

pleasing sounds. Mozart, for example, rewrote a passage from the last
movement of his Piano Concerto in G Major to match the song of his
starling.

The bird’s song, biomusicologists argue, was music before being

“composed” by Mozart.

However, the definition of “music, ” cautioned Ron Hoy, professor of

neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, should be examined
thoroughly before being used to describe particular sounds.

Although the term “music” has been liberally applied—to composer

John Cage’s “4'33''”,4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence, for example —
Hoy argues that all concepts of music return to the human view of
what is or is not “musical”

“Music,” said Hoy “is strictly an anthropological concept.” Humans find

beauty in certain sounds and dub them music,” he said.

“A whole generation of ’60s hippies altered their minds listening to

whale songs, ” said Hoy. “To human ears, they’re gorgeous.”

But do animals purposefully create these aesthetically pleasing

sounds?
 38

Atema argues that this possibility should be given serious

consideration. Just as our ancestors labored over their musical
instruments, animals work at their own musical creations, he said.

“ [Humpback whales] spend a huge amount of energy and time making

music, ” said Atema.

Hoy noted, however, that some scientists argue that so-called musical
sounds created by animals serve only a biological function.

“I think it’s completely open as to whether animals experience music

the way that we do, ”said Hoy. Because animals’ cognitive abilities
have not been fully understood, their creations can only be filtered
through human ears and emotions.

MUSIC: NOT JUST A HUMAN LANGUAGE

Biomusicologists argue that not only are the sounds of some animals
pleasing, but they are also composed with the same musical language
that humans use.

Whales, for example, use many of the musical concepts found in

human music, including similar rhythms, phrase lengths, and song
structure. These similarities, the Science writers maintain, “prove that
these marine mammals are inveterate composers. ”

The writers also point to birds as musicians, noting that bird songs
follow rhythmic patterns and pitches that are in tune with human
music. Birds not only create vocal sound, they point out, some also add
a percussion instrument to their songs.

Citing these similarities, as well as the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal

flutes examined by Atema, the Science article suggest that there may
be a “universal music”: one that unites all composers—human and
animal.

The “impenetrable vagueness” of music, they conclude, “seems to

signal that the roots of music lie closer to our ancient lizard brain…that
music has a more ancient origin even than human language.”
 39

Ancient Greek sodomizing a goat, plate XVII from 'De Figuris Veneris'
by F.K. Forberg', illustrated by Édouard-Henri Avril.

Human–goat sexual intercourse is one of the more common types of

bestiality. Of male zoophiles, 28% admitted sexual attraction to goats,
ranking fourth. In female zoophiles, sexual attraction to goats is very
rare or non-existent. Actual levels of sexual use of goats were lower
than this however.[1] The act is usually performed by a male human
upon a goat of either sex; male goats do not commonly take the
initiative to copulate with a human female, although some cases have
been reported.[2]

History

In Ancient Egypt, at the temple in Mendes, the goat was viewed as the
incarnation of the god of procreation. As a ritual of worship, the male
priests would use female goats for sex, and the female priests would
do likewise with male goats.[1] Similar activity was also witnessed in
Ancient Greece.[2] In the Middle Ages, the goat was associated with the
Devil as one of his preferred forms, often in connection with sexual
deviance. Women under trial as witches were forced to confess that
they had sexual contact with the Devil in the form of an animal. In this
regard however the goat was of the minority of forms the devil was
cited to have taken.[2]

Pan and a goat

There is a famous statue of the mythological satyr Pan using a goat for
sex, which was found in Pompeii. As with the rest of the erotic art in
Pompeii, it shocked the Victorian sensibilities of the time.[3]

In 1188, Gerald of Wales published Topographia Hibernica, an

illustrated manuscript.[4] In addition to depicting a king mating with a
mare then drinking its blood, the manuscript depicts a woman using a
 40

goat for sex.[4] The manuscript is one of history's earliest propaganda

tracts.[4]

In 2006 a Sudanese man was caught using his neighbor's goat for sex.
As punishment the village elders forced the man to marry 'Rose the
goat' because "he used it as his wife".[5]

Popular culture

In the 2002 play The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? written by American
playwright Edward Albee, the character Martin, a famous architect,
falls in love with a goat named Sylvia.[6] Martin's use of the goat
becomes known to his best friend.[6] The best friend tells Martin's
suburban wife, Stevie, and their 17-year-old son, who become
devastated.[6][7]

In the 2004 comedy/horror film Club Dread, the Juan character admits
to using a goat for sex.[8]

In 2007, American artist Paul McCarthy displayed Cultural Gothic, a

technologically complex installation of wigged, mannequin-like figures.
[9]
Cultural Gothic shows a father helping his son use a goat for sex,
with a strangely distanced and robotic look.[9] The work is "a
deliberately ugly reflection of the base, dehumanizing and machismo
instincts in popular culture." Cultural Gothic served to indict of those
instincts.[9]

References

1. ^ a b Andrea M. Beetz. "Human sexual contact with animals".

2. ^ a b c Havelock Ellis (2004). "Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
volume 5". ISBN 1554458315. Page 33. (Google book)
3. ^ Atiyah, Jeremy. (July 2, 2000) The Independent Where love and
anchovies are in the air. For an image, see not child safe image.
4. ^ a b c Irish Times (March 15, 2003) This land is our land. Section:
Weekend. Page 55.
5. ^ Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat
6. ^ a b c Brown, Tony. (March 31, 2002) The Plain Dealer Broadway
blasts off. Fresh faces and old hands propel sales to a record.
Section: Sunday Arts; Page J1.
7. ^ North Shore Times (April 14, 2006) Glib play with few straight
laugh lines. Section: 1; Page 37.
8. ^ Waltz. Amanda. (March 1, 2004) UWIRE "Club Dread" may be,
in fact, dreaded.
 41

9. ^ a b c Turner, Elisa. (April 1, 2007) The Miami Herald L.A. Art

Exposed. Rubell exhibit explores West Coast scene. Section: M;
page M3.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/human-goat-sexual-

intercourse#ixzz1Cat0UTD5

Ancient Greek sodomizing a goat, plate XVII from 'De Figuris Veneris'
by F.K. Forberg', illustrated by Édouard-Henri Avril.

Human–goat sexual intercourse is one of the more common types of

bestiality. Of male zoophiles, 28% admitted sexual attraction to
goats, ranking fourth. In female zoophiles, sexual attraction to
goats is very rare or non-existent. Actual levels of sexual use of
goats were lower than this however.[1] The act is usually
performed by a male human upon a goat of either sex; male goats
do not commonly take the initiative to copulate with a human
female, although some cases have been reported.[2] History
In Ancient Egypt, at the temple in Mendes, the goat was viewed as the
incarnation of the god of procreation. As a ritual of worship, the male
priests would use female goats for sex, and the female priests would
do likewise with male goats.[1] Similar activity was also witnessed in
Ancient Greece.[2] In the Middle Ages, the goat was associated with the
Devil as one of his preferred forms, often in connection with sexual
deviance. Women under trial as witches were forced to confess that
they had sexual contact with the Devil in the form of an animal. In this
regard however the goat was of the minority of forms the devil was
cited to have taken.[2]
 42

Animal Systems of Communication

(Edward Vajda)

There are about five thousand mutually unintelligible forms of

language spoken on the Earth today. Although these languages differ
strikingly in their phonological, morphological and syntactic structure,
each and every language serves to express a virtually unlimited
variety of old and new experience. Each and every language can
express any thought the human mind can devise. In this way no
human group possesses a primitive or incomplete language. And each
living language is constantly changing as speakers easily adapt it to
new circumstances (cf. Navajo words for automobile parts). Human
creativity continually shapes language, and structural differences
between languages do not seem to limit the thought patterns of native
speakers in any fundamental or permanent way.

One way to better understand the apparently unique creative potential

of human language is to contrast it with systems of communication
found elsewhere in nature. The differences between animal and
human communication, as we shall see, are profound, but all the
differences seem to derive from a single basic fact: Humans possess a
natural, inborn facility to be creative with symbols; as far as we know,
animals do not. (I say this not because I want to disparage animals or
condone their mistreatment. I do not. I like animals--especially cats.) I
only want to say that if animals do actually think creatively, or if they
have the potential to acquire human-style creative languages, this
capacity is not evident in their naturally-occurring systems of
 43

communication. And attempts to teach animals to communicate

creativity with human-made symbols have so far shown little real
success; occasional claims to the contrary have not been
substantiated.

Let's first look at three specific systems of animal communication to

examine more closely the implications of these difference between
animals and humans. Let's talk about birds, bees, and apes.

Birds have two types of sound signals--calls and songs.

Bird calls consist of one or more short notes and seem to be

instinctive responses to danger, nesting, flocking and a few other basic
situations. The English sparrow has three flight calls-- one used just
before takeoff, another during flight, and one just before landing at a
nesting site. Sparrows have two types of danger calls, one to
announce that a predator is nearby--like an owl in a tree-- and the
other to announce that a predator is soaring overhead. These calls
seem intended to coordinate group activity in specific situations. The
meanings of these signs constitute a small, finite set which can't be
increased. And bird calls cannot be varied to produce variations of
meaning.

Bird songs are used primarily by males to attract mates or establish

territory. Bird songs are limited to these and only these functions.
Although bird songs are longer than bird calls, their internal elements
aren't separable into meaningful units and cannot be rearranged to
produce new songs.

Interestingly, although bird songs are inborn, and young birds naturally
begin producing them at a certain age even if raised away from their
species, the fledgling bird must experience adult songs to reproduce
the song perfectly. If the fledgling is deprived of this input it will grow
up to produce the song naturally anyway, but with marked
imperfections. [This is radically different from how human children
acquire and use words. Children will not naturally develop the word
"apple" unless they hear it first and then repeat it; they will not,
without ever hearing it, naturally develop a degraded version of the
word "apple" or of any other word.) The specific words of human
languages are acquired through exposure and are definitely not
inborn.]

Let's turn to what is in some ways a more complex system of

communication. The honeybee system of communication consist of
dances performed on the wall of the hive. In the 1960's Karl von
 44

Frisch discovered that the Italian honeybee performs three types of

dances on the wall of the hive to communicate to other bees the
source of nectar.

1) The round dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar

is within 20 feet of the hive; the richness of the source is indicated by
intensity of movement and by the number of repetition; direction from
the hive is not indicated.

2) The sickle dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar

is within 20-60 feet from the hive; again, the richness of the source is
indicated by intensity of movement; the angle with respect to gravity
denotes the direction in relation to the sun.

3) The tail-wagging dance is performed to indicate that the source of

nectar is beyond 60 feet from the hive (80 feet in the Austrian
honeybee). It imparts all the information of the sickle dance plus
indicates the precise distance by the number of repetitions per
minute--the slower the repetition the farther the distance.

The bees system of communication is capable of yielding an infinite

number of different messages, like human language. But unlike
human language, bee communication is confined to a single subject:
the location of nectar with respect to the hive. Bees can only report
the location of nectar recently detected; they cannot reminisce about
a wonderful source of nectar found last week or convey parental
worries about the work habits of younger generations of bees; they
cannot predict nectar sources. Nor can bees vary their message to
convey additional information which is crucial for finding nectar, such
as hardships discovered en route to a source of nectar. In an
experiment, one bee was tricked by being made to walk in a tube 25
feet to a particularly rich source of nectar; when she returned to the
hive, this bee performed the tail-wagging dance, expressing that the
honey was hundreds of feet from the hive--which would have been
correct if the bee had spent the same amount of time flying to the
source instead of walking there.

Novice bees returning from their first nectar foray instinctively know
how to perform the dance--just like a newborn baby instinctively knows
how to cry and later instinctively develops the smile reflex. The bees'
dance is basically an instinct-driven response to an external stimuli--
like our laughter, sneezes, or tears but unlike our words.

What about ape communication? Many people think that primates

are at a level of development only a few steps below that of humans.
 45

In some parts of Indonesia people believe that apes don't speak

because they know that if they did humans would put them to work. As
it turns out, ape communication is no closer to human language than
the systems of bees and birds--it is a strictly limited, non-creative
system.

First of all, the social context of primate communication in the wild is

completely different than for humans.

a) Among apes communication generally takes place within a single

social group composed of members of both sexes and of disparate
ages, who have spent most or all of their lives together. Attempts at
communication between complete strangers is very rare.

b) Primates, as a rule, have very good eyesight and much of their

communication is accomplished in gestures or body language. To
show dominance, a primate has a relaxed posture and walks with a
sort of swagger. The timid primate, by contrast, is tense and walks
with its back arched as if to spring away at any moment.

c) The meaning of gestures differs from species to species, even

slightly from group to group among the same species. Monkeys use a
grimace to signal aggression and hostility, while chimpanzees bare
their teeth as a form of greeting or reassurance. One species of
primates raised within the community of another species will come to
comprehend the other primate's signals but will only produce the
signals of its own species. This seems to indicate that primate
communication systems, like those of bees and birds, are largely
instinctive rather than learned.

Let's generalize the similarities and differences between human and

animal communication?

Similarity. All systems of communication contain signs, units of form

with specific meaning (words). Human languages contain sound
symbols called words; animal systems use more varied formal media,
but each form is a sign conveying definite meaning.

a) Foxes have a system of 20 vocalizations.

b) Electric eels have a system of electric pulse signals

c) Spiders have an elaborate system of courtship gestures.

d) Scents and smells serve as signals for many other species.

 46

Differences. For animals, the form of the signal may be visual,

auditory, olfactory, but each animal system differs entirely from all
human languages in six key ways.

1) The signs of animal systems are inborn. Birds, apes and bees
naturally and instinctively develop their species' signals, even if raised
in captivity and away from adults of their own species. Humans must
acquire language through exposure to a speech community (cf.
example of children picking up obscenities vs. a child getting a new
tooth). A Korean child adopted and raised in America won't
spontaneously develop Korean words or sentences in an all-English
speaking environment--or naturally develop a degraded form of
Korean. The words of human languages are definitely not inborn.
Rather, it seems that it is the capacity to acquire creative language
which is innate to humans. (Linguist Noam Chomsky calls this still
mysterious capacity the LAD, or language acquisition device.) The
actual form of any particular language is definitely not inborn and must
be acquired through prolonged exposure. No linguist disputes the fact
that a child of any ethnic origin can learn any language flawlessly if
raised in a community where that language is spoken. In acquiring a
human language, exposure to a speech community is all important;
racial or ethnic origin in themselves are completely unimportant.

2) Animal systems are set responses to stimuli. Animal

communication is here and now--used to express something more or
less immediately present in space and time. In other words, the signs
of animal communication are used as indexes. As far as we know,
animals can't communicate about yesterday, about what might be or
what wasn't. In this way animal communication systems are not unlike
the repertoire of sounds of a 12 month old infant, who has a way of
conveying interest in something immediately present, or conveying
emotional responses such as discontent, loneliness, and a few other
basic states of being.

Human language is not purely a reflex triggered automatically by

external stimuli or internal emotional states. Human language can be
used as an index, just like animal communication, but it may also
exhibit what has been termed displacement. Humans can not only
talk about things that are absent but also about things that have never
been. Humans can invent myths and tell lies. Human language can be
used arbitrarily, with the stimulus deep within the speaker's psyche
and the topic not present or even non-existent. Animal languages can
only be used as a means of pointing to something directly present in
time and space.
 47

3) In animal systems, each signal has one and only one function. More
than one sign cannot share the same meaning. For example, gorillas
in the wild have three types of signals which express danger, presence
of food, and desire for sex. The gibbon system of communication
consists of three signals: a signal for danger on the ground, another for
danger in a tree, and another for danger in the air; these three do not
overlap in meaning and each meaning can only be expressed by that
one sign.

In contrast the signs in human language usually have more than one
meaning; and each meaning can be expressed by more than one sign
(example with the word eye).

4) Animal signals are not naturally used in novel ways. Animal

systems are essentially non-creative. They cannot be used
metaphorically or figuratively. As far as we know, animals can't lie or
invent myths.

Human language is creative and can be used in novel ways. Two-year

old children can produce novel utterances they have never heard
before (*sheeps, *Daddy gived the book). By three, children regularly
produce sentences they have never heard before and regularly use
words in new, creative ways. Messages can be sent that have never
been heard before by the sender or by anyone else. Human languages
are infinitely creative in that a potentially limitless number of
messages can be sent.

Unlike animals, humans can lie, they can use language to distort or
extend the world around them. Animal communication is based on a
limited inventory of signs. If you learn the set of signals and their
meaning then you know the system completely; there is no creativity
for extending it further. This is not the case with human language. If
you were to learn the entire set of words in any human language, you
would still not know the language.

5) Because they are non-creative, animal systems are closed

inventories of signs used to express a few specific messages only.
Honeybees, for instance, can communicate only about the location of a
source of nectar. As far as we know, bees do not communicate about
the weather or the beauty of nature, or gossip about other bees in the
hive.

Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity. Besides

containing word symbols, human languages are based a system of
patterns, or rules, called grammar.
 48

Grammar can be defined as patterns with function but no

specific meaning: phonology (new sound combinations),
morphology (new words), syntax (new sentences). It is the
grammar that allows language signs to be used with virtually
endless creatively.

Animal systems is limited to a strictly defined, finite range of possible

messages--there is never anything new because there is no abstract
level similar to human grammar.

6) Because they are non-creative, animal systems seem not to change

from generation to generation. Actually, they change extremely
slowly, over periods of many thousands of years, but as a result of
genetic drift rather than conscious innovation. (Compare the dialects
of the American redwing blackbird, and the dialects of the European
honeybee).

Because it is a vehicle for creativity, human language is very

changeable. Human language often changes quickly from generation
to generation. If you read Shakespeare, who wrote in the 16th
century, you will note that the use and meaning of many words has
changed. If you were to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written a
few centuries earlier, you would need to consult a dictionary of Middle
English to get through the text. And if you tried to read Beowulf in the
original, you would understand almost nothing; even a dictionary
wouldn't be enough to get you through the text. The English spoken
1000 years ago would seem a completely foreign language, at least as
unintelligible to you as German or Icelandic. And roughly 7000 years
ago, the ancestors of such different languages as English, Italian, and
Russian were simply dialects of the one and the same language. And
40,000 years ago it is possible that the ancestral forms of such
disparate languages as Basque, Navajo, and Chinese may have been
dialects of the same language.

Animal languages also change, but they change with the slowness of
genetic drift. The minute differences between the dialects of the
European honeybee language, by contrast took perhaps 100,000 years
to develop. Human language changes more than that even during the
lifetime of each individual speaker (cf.: computer terminology; such
terms as "to impact," "to pig out"; also the changing pronunciation of
wh). Human language is constantly in flux; animal systems are
extremely stable.

What conclusions can we draw about naturally occurring

animal communication? We can say that the signs of animal
 49

communication are more like inborn and involuntary human reactions

such as laughter, crying, and sneezing than they are like human
language. As far as we know humans have always had laughter and
tears as natural inborn responses--children develop them naturally and
they don't change from generation to generation--although, even here,
humans can use these responses deliberately and creatively, or
suppress their naturally-felt urges to express them.

TEACHING ANIMALS CREATIVE LANGUAGE. Animals clearly do not

have creative communication which could be called true language.
But can animals be taught to use creative human-style languages?
This question is still debated by linguists and natural scientists--but the
answer is probably no. Let's look at some of the evidence for and
against the presence of latent creative linguistic ability in animals.

Some birds have an almost uncanny capacity for mimicry.

Mockingbirds imitate the songs of other birds. Parrots and mynah
birds can render perfect imitations of the human voice. This shows
that the difference between human and animal languages is not due
merely to the specific structure of the human speech organs which
animals lack. Mynah bird can repeat "dad" and "bad" but cannot
produce a novel utterance "dab" by creatively rearranging the
elements in the former two words. In order to produce "dab" the
parrot would have to hear it and respond to it as a stimulus. A two-
year old child, by contrast, can invent new utterances based on the
elements of the ones he has already heard. A parrot, on the other
hand, can repeat "cat" and "cats", "dog" and "dogs", but if it hears the
word "parrot" it will not be able to produce the form "parrots" by
analogy. (There is a report of an African gray parrot in Chicago who
can form plurals creatively, and says "Hello" and "Good-bye" at the
appropriate time. This seems to be a highly unusual instance if it is
true.)

Let's compare how children naturally form plurals of nouns creatively.

One child psychologist performed experiment with three-year old
children: showed a picture and called it a wug, then showed several of
them. The children all produced the plural "wugs".

This experiment seems to prove that the difference between human

and animal languages is in the brain rather than due to the specific
structure of the speech organs. If bird calls were put to use by humans
they could be used creatively and would cease being set responses to
certain stimuli only. On the contrary, if human signs are used by
parrots, they seem to be used as single isolated responses to things
 50

present at the moment. In other words, they are indexes (indices) used
telegraphically.

What about apes? Can humans teach apes to use language

creatively? Unlike certain birds, apes clearly lack the vocal cord
apparatus necessary to imitate the actual sounds of human speech.
This is irrelevant, though, since the true language organ is the brain. Is
there a latent language capacity in the brains of our closest
evolutionary cousins? Once again, scientists disagree, although
experimentation so far suggests that apes have only very minor
amounts of ability to be creative with human-taught symbols.

a) In an experiment, two linguists from Berkeley, Beatrice and Allen

Gartner tried to teach a female chimp Washou to communicate using
colored blocks. By the age of 6 Washou had learned 100 signs but
couldn't put them together in novel ways or use them in the absence
of the given stimulus. In other words, each symbol was used as an
index.

b) Certain other experiments however, seem to indicate, that apes,

given extensive teaching and training by skilled scientists, evince a
limited capacity to be creative with symbols. (One ape supposedly
signed that a bagel was a "rock bracelet".) However, apes seem
incapable of acquiring a true grammar--a set of functional patterns
that can express unlimited meaning.

Human children, by contrast, learn language without being deliberately

taught by anyone at all. Even severely retarded children acquire
language spontaneously from adults without any special teaching.
Thus we must conclude that animals--even the most clever apes, and,
yes, even cats, lack the cognitive mental apparatus to be infinitely
creative with communicative symbols. Humans--all humans--are
distinguished from all other species by an innate capacity acquire
grammar and create language.
 51

Bird Language: A Path to Awareness

by Alexia Stevens

A NatureSkills.com exclusive

Birds make noises to communicate with each other, and we can learn
to understand what they are “talking” about. Patience and
observation are really all it takes, even though a field guide will come
in handy. You don’t have to identify birds in order to understand their
voices. As you get to know the birds around you, you will be able to
intuit their language, the same way you can tell when a close friend is
happy or upset just from how that person answers the phone.

You might not need to know the names of the birds, but you should
know something about their habits in order to understand their voices.
The birds with the most to say about other animals traveling on the
ground are the birds that live on the ground. A tiny warbler or
chickadee, up in the treetops, might not care if a coyote is traveling
underneath it, but a song sparrow will certainly notice when a coyote is
passing through.

The predator is traveling right through the sparrow’s home in the

thicket! The general rule is that small brown birds that live near the
ground will tell you the most. There are a lot of birds out there, but
don’t start out by trying to learn them all. The perching birds, known
as the passerines, have the most reliable voices. These are birds like
sparrows, wrens, or blackbirds. In contrast, woodpeckers, herons,
ducks, or hawks are not passerines.
 52

Here’s the short list of helpful birds:

American robin (Turdus migratorius), song sparrow (Melospiza

melodia), dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis), a local wren, and a local
towhee. If any of these birds doesn’t live near you, follow the general
rule about finding perching birds that forage on the ground. The first
owl or house cat that ventures into your backyard will show you the
birds to pay attention to.

You will have to gauge the “trustworthiness” of your birds. The species
above are reliable, but jays or crows, in the corvid family, can lead you
astray with their seemingly random squawking. I snuck up on a yelling
jay family, only to hear them shut up completely when they caught
sight of me. I still think they were pulling my leg.

Despite their unpredictability, you can use crows and jays to find owls
and hawks. Corvids seem to have a special dislike for these predators,
so a stationary mob of noisy crows might indicate a raptor.

When you have found your five reliable ground-feeding passerines, you
can start to distinguish the vocalizations they use in different
situations. It’s the same concept as being able to tell the difference
between someone yelling for help and someone singing.

Here are the five basic “voices” that birds use, as Jon Young
outlines in his “Language of the Birds” cassette. Most bird noises
will fall into these categories. The first four are baseline, or business-
as-usual voices, and the last one is about alarm.

Song is the best-known noise that birds make. Male birds sing a lot in
the spring, and sometimes all year round. If a bird is relaxed and safe
enough to be singing, there probably aren’t any predators nearby. The
song is the vocalization usually heard on bird identification tapes, and
you may see the bird singing from an exposed perch.

Companion calling is the second voice of the birds. These are the
sounds that birds make to keep track of their flock mates or
“spouses.” Usually it’s a dialogue of soft chips or tweets. Translated
into human speech, it might be akin to the calm murmur of voices in a
restaurant. The rhythm is conversational and regular. You might see a
 53

pair of towhees flicking their tails periodically as a visual signal to each

other, or a flock of robins moving in unison, making soft whistles.

The third voice is juvenile begging, and it’s usually heard in the
springtime when baby birds have turned into hungry teenagers. The
parents feed them, because if they don’t shut these babies up, a
predator will hear them. While the young bird’s cries may sound
strangled and horrible, that’s just the sound of another juicy morsel
being shoved down the hatch. Most baby birds flutter their wings and
open their beaks wide as they plead for food. The repetitive whining
may be obnoxious, but don’t mistake it for distress.

The fourth voice, aggression, also sounds gruesome but it does not
indicate a predator in the area. You might have observed two male
robins or mockingbirds staking their claims to opposite sides of the
yard. There is plenty of flapping and squawking, but other birds don’t
pay attention. Sometimes female birds will help their mates defend
territory, so this behavior isn’t confined to males.

We’re about to hear the fifth voice, alarm. Look at the lawn, the park,
the forest, or the field where all the birds are singing and feeding. That
is baseline. Now a hawk flies over, a jogger comes through, or a
bobcat creeps from behind a bush. The birds cross from comfort into
distress, and you will notice behavior that is not like their relaxed
feeding or preening. The actual noise the bird makes may not be very
different from its companion call, but the emotion behind it will feel
agitated rather than calm.

A song sparrow might be up out of its thicket, chipping nervously.

Maybe a flock of robins will squeal and dive for cover, telling you that a
sharp-shinned hawk is on the prowl. Certain behaviors, like wiping the
bill on a branch, can also signal agitation. Recognizing baseline is
essential for being able to recognize alarm.

Different animals and events will cause different alarm sequences, so it

can be difficult to determine what each bird is actually responding to.
Your common sense is the best guide for deciphering the birds’
reactions. For instance, a predator on the ground will cause birds to
move up farther than that predator can jump, while an aerial predator
like a hawk will cause the birds to dive down into cover.

With practice, and knowledge of your local wildlife, bird language will
indicate what kind of predator is causing the disturbance. Think of how
each kind of animal moves. A bobcat or housecat that slinks along will
collect a little following of alarmed birds. The sound of the alarms will
 54

travel slowly through the forest as some birds join in and others leave
as the cat moves through their territories. A fast-moving dog or coyote
will cause birds to “popcorn” up, just a few birds at a time popping up
and alarming. A perched owl or hawk will draw a mob of calling birds
that stay in one place. A bird-eating hawk, like the sharp-shinned,
Cooper’s or goshawk, will cause a dramatic duck-and-cover
disappearing act.

Interestingly, bird responses to humans seem to vary. If you are using

bird language to detect approaching humans, you must factor in the
habitat and the attitude of the person. Are you in a park where the
birds are used to people? Is the person stomping along in a bad mood,
or strolling without a care in the world?

I tried to move quietly and sneakily out to my bird watching spot, only
to hear towhees and robins make unflattering comments about me
—“Who is this person sneaking around here?” Now I stroll in whistling
a tune, and the birds seem more relaxed. After all, I am exhibiting
baseline behavior.

It’s not uncommon for birds to be quiet around feeding deer, but then
start to alarm when the deer begins sneaking away. Perhaps the deer
is sneaking away from you as you are coming down the trail, so listen
for these peripheral or secondary bird alarms. The more you can
expand your hearing and awareness, the more you will be able to see
and experience.

Once you tune into the attitudes and nuances of bird behavior, you will
often be warned when animals are nearby. This is how deer and other
wary creatures use bird language to hide from approaching humans.
Sometimes it’s the other way around! I was sitting in my yard early
one morning, and heard Spider-eater the winter wren give an annoyed
twitter. The pair of song sparrows (Big Gray and Tan-stripe) chimed in
a moment later. Something was moving towards me, and moving
fast! I barely had time to pull my camouflaged blanket over my face,
leaving a peephole so I could watch the big coyote trot past, thirty feet
away.

If you are intrigued by these stories, try some of the activities that I
find helpful when learning about bird language.

I always strive to develop an ability to recognize individuals. Dr.

Doolittle (the character in the old books I read as a kid, not the recent
movies) said that if you saw two sparrows in a tree, and could
recognize the same two sparrows the next day, you were observant
 55

enough to learn to speak to animals. The surest route to

understanding birds is to spend time each day at the same place—a
place that has birds around. A backyard is perfect. Draw a map of
where you see regularly see the same birds. In my backyard, Chirpy
the wren always sings from the south ridge, but Spider-eater sings
from the north ridge. Springtime makes territory boundaries and
songs clearer, so that’s a good time to get out there and use your ears.

You might find a place to position yourself along a human trail to listen
for the birds to tell you when someone is coming by. Soon you will be
able to tell if a hiker, jogger, rider, or cyclist is about to come around
the corner. I wouldn’t try to win any bets about guessing it, though!
Birds have a talent for humbling us. It’s also best not to scare any
humans.

If you are listening to bird tapes or CDs, focus on the birds of your
area. Listen to them over and over, and act them out. How does the
robin run across the yard? How does the blue jay flip its tail around?
How does the great horned owl turn its golden-eyed head? Put
yourself in the bird’s feathers and you will be able to understand bird
language.

This is a brief overview of a complex topic. Whether you simply notice

more birds than you did before, or learn every bird in your
neighborhood, prick up your ears at the world of sound that surrounds
us. Birds are bound to lift your spirits with the mysteries and delight of
bird language.

The Language of Angels

Maybe their language is not as mysterious as we once thought?

Paul teaches at length on the subject of speaking in unknown

tongues. He makes it clear that if a person can speak in the
tongues of men or angels, but doesn’t love, that person is
nothing but noise (1 Corinthians 13:1).

To this day, the teaching of unknown tongues and tongues of angels is

brought up often among Christians.

The meaning of this has been debated for centuries, and especially
since the rise of the charismatic movement of the church. Unknown
 56

tongues are easily understood to be foreign languages or languages

foreign to the teachers and readers of God’s Word. The important
question, at least for me, is:

What is the language of angels?

Many will say that it is a language that cannot be interpreted by

people. This is the understanding which brings entire congregations to
pray with babbling noises that another may claim to understand and in
turn give an interpretation. I am not going to debate or debunk any of
these beliefs. I will merely give an explanation of the language of
angels according to the ancient, Jewish sages, such as Rabbi Paul, who
taught on this subject using their Mishnaic commentaries and Jewish
education.

The subject of angels with respect to the ancient Jewish understanding

is quite vast. Humans and angels were often compared in order to
point out the differences between the two creations. Their similarities
were also pointed out. One similarity that was taught by the Jewish
sages was that

“they both converse in the Holy Tongue” (Chag. 16a).

In Paul’s day, there were many Hellenistic Jews who had continued to
use the language which they had obtained during their time of exile in
Babylon. The language that these Jews used was Aramaic, unlike the
Hebraic Jews who, after the Maccabean Revolt, had chosen to re-adopt
their ancient language of Hebrew. The language of Hebrew was to be
used in all Torah teachings and it was called the language of prayer for
the Jews of the first century

(Abraham Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud, 49).

 57

The rabbis, like Paul, also believed and taught that the angels were
ignorant of Aramaic, therefore, no petition to God should be made in
this language since it was the angels’ duty to carry the prayers of
God’s people to God’s Throne (Sot. 33a). The Holy Language, Heavenly
Language, or Language of Angels was considered to be none other
than Hebrew. “The Hebrew services included prominent expressions of
praise to God which were believed to be carried by the angels and
placed as a crown upon the Head of the Holy One…” (Cohen, 49).

In His dust,

Johnny.

Writer: Capt. Jonathan Gainey was born in Jacksonville, FL in June, 1969. He has been
married to Staci, the daughter of retired Salvation Army officers, for twenty years and
they have four children ages 18, 16, 12, and 4. Jonathan was commissioned as an officer
in June of 2002, and is currently serving in his third appointment in New Bern, NC, USA.
He is working on a Masters of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and
is the creator and manager of the Flocks Diner website, where his passion for
learning and teaching is expressed and shared through writing and a weekly podcast.

1. Hi Johnny,

BRILLIANT!!!!! I love reading your stuff. It makes so much sense, and

makes everything you read in the Bible so much more logical and
understandable. It makes faith real, rather than some mystical magical
incantation. I can really get into it.

Growing up in Far North Queensland in Australia, where the religions

atmosphere is EXTREMELY fundamentalist and charasmatic to the
extreme (even TSA corps in the division seemed to teach that you
weren’t saved unless you ’spoke in tongues spontaneously’), this
understanding of ‘tongues’ that you present is brilliant, and such a
rebuff to such teaching that I got as a teenager.

Yours in Christ,
Graeme.

jammixmaster
Feb 15, 2009
I would really like to know. When summoning a spirit (angelic or
demonic) they usually speak the language of the person who
summoned them, but what is their original language. And please dont
say "Hebrew" or "Latin" or "Aramaic". It would be impossible for them
 58

to speak any of those languages originally because those languages

didn't exist until humans came along.....and if angels and demons
predate the human race it would be impossible for them to originally
speak a human language. So does anyone know what language angels
and demons ORIGINALLY speak?

AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE: ASL FOR

CHRISTMAS
Heather Marie Kosur

Angel – Form the hands with the fingers held together and straight.
Tap the fingertips to the shoulders with the palms facing down. Lift and
 59

twist the hands around with the palms facing forward. The sign for
angel resembles angel wings.

Berry – Hold the left fist at chest level with palm facing the body and
the left pinky extended from the fist and pointing toward the left. Form
the letter O of the sign language alphabet with the right hand. Wrap
the tips of right fingers around the tip of the left pinky and twist.

Bethlehem – Sign the letter B of the sign language alphabet in front of

the chin. Form the letter B with both hands. Touch the fingertips of the
hands together to form an upside down V on the left side of the body.
Then touch the fingertips of the hands together to form an upside
down V in the center of the body.

Candle – Form the number 1 in sign language with the left hand and
the number 5 with the right hand. Hold the right hand in front of the
left shoulder with the palm facing left. Touch the tip of the left index
finger to the bottom of the right palm. Wiggle the right fingers.

Candy – Form the number 1 in sign language with the right hand. Place
the right index finger at the corner of the lips on the right side of the
mouth. Swipe the right index finger down three times.

Card - Begin by forming both hands with the middle, ring, and pinky
fingers folded onto the palms. Spread the thumb and index fingers to
form the letter L on both hands. Hold the hands in front of the chest
with the tips of the index fingers and the tips of the thumbs touching.
Pull the hands apart and stop in front of the shoulders. Lower the index
fingers to the thumbs.

Carol – Hold the left hand at waist level with the left palm facing up.
Hold the right hand above the left fingertips with the right palm facing
down. Swipe the right hand back and forth over the left arm twice.

Christmas – Hold the left arm in front of the body across the chest with
the palm facing down. Rest the elbow of the right arm on top of the
back of the left hand. Form the right hand into the shape of the letter
 60

C. Place the right hand on the left elbow. Lift the right arm from the
elbow in an arching motion in front of the body.

Cranberry – Fingerspell the word C-R-A-N-B-E-R-R-Y with the sign

language alphabet.

Decorate/decoration - Form a flattened letter O of the sign language

alphabet with both hands. Touch the fingertips together. Hold the
hands in front of the body on the left side at forehead level. Twist the
fingertips together twice. Move the hands to the right side of the
forehead. Twist the fingertips together twice again.

Dinner – Form the letter D of the sign language alphabet with the right
hand. With the index finger pointing up, tap the tips of the other
fingers on the mouth twice.

Eggnog – Fingerspell the word E-G-G-N-O-G with the sign language

alphabet.

Gift/present – Form the letter X of the sign language alphabet with

both hands. Hold both hands in front of the body at waist level. Move
both hands forward twice.

Holiday – Begin by forming both hands with the fingers and thumbs
held apart and slightly curved. Hold the hands in front of the chest with
the palms facing down. Tap the thumbs to the chest twice.

Please continue reading on page two for more ASL Christmas signs.

Read more:
http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/58797.aspx#ix
zz1CalvIOV4

More Christmas ASL

Holly - Begin by forming both hands with the middle, ring, and pinky
fingers folded onto the palms. Spread the thumb and index fingers to
form the letter L on both hands. Hold the hands in front of the chest
with the tips of the index fingers and the tips of the thumbs touching.
 61

Touch the index fingertips to the thumbs twice while pulling the hands
apart. The sign for holly resembles the shape of a holly leaf.

Ivy – Fingerspell the word I-V-Y with the sign language alphabet.

Jesus – Hold both hands in front of the chest with the right palm facing
left and the left palm facing right. Tap the middle finger of the right
hand to the left palm. Then tap the middle finger of the left hand to the
right palm.

Light – Form the number 1 in sign language with the right hand. Make
a circle with the right index finger next to the right temple. Then pop
all five fingers open.

Mistletoe – Form a squished letter X of the sign language alphabet with

the right hand. Hold the right hand above the head. Form the number
2 in sign language with the left hand. Touch the tips of the left index
and middle fingers to the right side of the mouth. Slide the left
fingertips to the middle of the cheek. The sign for mistletoe resembles
receiving a kiss under the mistletoe.

Ornament - Form a flattened letter O of the sign language alphabet

with both hands. Touch the fingertips together. Hold the hands in front
of the chin. Twist the fingertips together three times while moving the
hands to the right.

Reindeer – Form the number 5 in sign language with both hands. Tap
the thumbs to the temples of the forehead with the palms facing
forward twice. The sign for reindeer resembles reindeer antlers.

Santa Claus – Form the number 5 in sign language with both hands and
curl the fingers and thumbs in to form half circles. Place the hands at
the chin. Make two half circles with the hands while moving the hands
down from the chin. The sign for Santa Claus resembles a beard.

Sleigh – Form the letter V of the sign language alphabet with both
hands. Begin with the hands in front of the shoulders. Move both hands
down at an angle while bending the index and middle fingers. The sign
for sleigh resembles the runners on a sleigh.

Snow – Form the number 5 in sign language with both hands. Begin
with the hands on either side of the face. Lower the hands to the waist
while wiggling the fingers.
 62

Star – Form the number 1 in sign language with both hands. Hold the
hands in front of the chin with the palms facing forward and the index
fingers pointing up. Bounce the fingers up and down.

Tinsel – Fingerspell the word T-I-N-S-E-L with the sign language

alphabet.

Tree – Hold the left arm in front of the body at waist level with the
palm facing down. Place the right elbow on top of the left hand and
hold the right arm straight up. Hold the fingers of the right hand apart
and twist the right wrist back and forth.

Wine – Form the letter W of the sign language alphabet with the right
hand. Circle the W in front of the right cheek.

Read more:
http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/58797.aspx?
p=2#ixzz1CamAv8HQ
 63

How You Compare Human Language

Against Animal Communication?
So far, the main similarities and differences between human and
animal communication can be summarized as follows: human language
is a signalling system which used sounds, a characteristic shared by a
large number of animal systems. In animal communication, there is
frequently a connection between the signal and the message sent, and
the system is mainly genetically inbuilt. In human language, the
symbols are mostly arbitrary, and the system has to be painstakingly
transmitted from one generation to another.

Duality and displacement-the organization of language into two layers,

and the ability to talk about absent object and events- are extremely
rare in animal world; no animal communication system has both these
features. Creativity, the ability to produce novel utterances, seems not
to be present in any natural communication system possessed by
animals. Finally, patterning and structure dependence may also be
unique language features. This is true of all language in the world,
which are remarkably similar in their main design features.

There is no evidence that any language is more 'primitive' than any

other. There are certainly primitive cultures. A primitive culture is
reflected in the vocabulary of a language, which might lack words
common in advanced societies. But vocabulary is superficial. Even the
most primitive tribes have languages whose underlying structure is
much bit as complex as English or Russian or Chinese.

Animal Systems of Communication

(Edward Vajda)

There are about five thousand mutually unintelligible forms of

language spoken on the Earth today. Although these languages differ
strikingly in their phonological, morphological and syntactic structure,
each and every language serves to express a virtually unlimited
variety of old and new experience. Each and every language can
 64

express any thought the human mind can devise. In this way no
human group possesses a primitive or incomplete language. And each
living language is constantly changing as speakers easily adapt it to
new circumstances (cf. Navajo words for automobile parts). Human
creativity continually shapes language, and structural differences
between languages do not seem to limit the thought patterns of native
speakers in any fundamental or permanent way.

One way to better understand the apparently unique creative potential

of human language is to contrast it with systems of communication
found elsewhere in nature. The differences between animal and
human communication, as we shall see, are profound, but all the
differences seem to derive from a single basic fact: Humans possess a
natural, inborn facility to be creative with symbols; as far as we know,
animals do not. (I say this not because I want to disparage animals or
condone their mistreatment. I do not. I like animals--especially cats.) I
only want to say that if animals do actually think creatively, or if they
have the potential to acquire human-style creative languages, this
capacity is not evident in their naturally-occurring systems of
communication. And attempts to teach animals to communicate
creativity with human-made symbols have so far shown little real
success; occasional claims to the contrary have not been
substantiated.

Let's first look at three specific systems of animal communication to

examine more closely the implications of these difference between
animals and humans. Let's talk about birds, bees, and apes.

Birds have two types of sound signals--calls and songs.

Bird calls consist of one or more short notes and seem to be instinctive
responses to danger, nesting, flocking and a few other basic
situations. The English sparrow has three flight calls-- one used just
before takeoff, another during flight, and one just before landing at a
nesting site. Sparrows have two types of danger calls, one to
announce that a predator is nearby--like an owl in a tree-- and the
other to announce that a predator is soaring overhead. These calls
seem intended to coordinate group activity in specific situations. The
meanings of these signs constitute a small, finite set which can't be
increased. And bird calls cannot be varied to produce variations of
meaning.

Bird songs are used primarily by males to attract mates or establish

territory. Bird songs are limited to these and only these functions.
Although bird songs are longer than bird calls, their internal elements
 65

aren't separable into meaningful units and cannot be rearranged to

produce new songs.

Interestingly, although bird songs are inborn, and young birds naturally
begin producing them at a certain age even if raised away from their
species, the fledgling bird must experience adult songs to reproduce
the song perfectly. If the fledgling is deprived of this input it will grow
up to produce the song naturally anyway, but with marked
imperfections. [This is radically different from how human children
acquire and use words. Children will not naturally develop the word
"apple" unless they hear it first and then repeat it; they will not,
without ever hearing it, naturally develop a degraded version of the
word "apple" or of any other word.) The specific words of human
languages are acquired through exposure and are definitely not
inborn.]

Let's turn to what is in some ways a more complex system of

communication. The honeybee system of communication consist of
dances performed on the wall of the hive. In the 1960's Karl von Frisch
discovered that the Italian honeybee performs three types of dances
on the wall of the hive to communicate to other bees the source of
nectar.

1) The round dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar

is within 20 feet of the hive; the richness of the source is indicated by
intensity of movement and by the number of repetition; direction from
the hive is not indicated.

2) The sickle dance is performed to indicate that the source of nectar is

within 20-60 feet from the hive; again, the richness of the source is
indicated by intensity of movement; the angle with respect to gravity
denotes the direction in relation to the sun.

3) The tail-wagging dance is performed to indicate that the source of

nectar is beyond 60 feet from the hive (80 feet in the Austrian
honeybee). It imparts all the information of the sickle dance plus
indicates the precise distance by the number of repetitions per
minute--the slower the repetition the farther the distance.

The bees system of communication is capable of yielding an infinite

number of different messages, like human language. But unlike
human language, bee communication is confined to a single subject:
the location of nectar with respect to the hive. Bees can only report
the location of nectar recently detected; they cannot reminisce about
a wonderful source of nectar found last week or convey parental
 66

worries about the work habits of younger generations of bees; they

cannot predict nectar sources. Nor can bees vary their message to
convey additional information which is crucial for finding nectar, such
as hardships discovered en route to a source of nectar. In an
experiment, one bee was tricked by being made to walk in a tube 25
feet to a particularly rich source of nectar; when she returned to the
hive, this bee performed the tail-wagging dance, expressing that the
honey was hundreds of feet from the hive--which would have been
correct if the bee had spent the same amount of time flying to the
source instead of walking there.

Novice bees returning from their first nectar foray instinctively know
how to perform the dance--just like a newborn baby instinctively knows
how to cry and later instinctively develops the smile reflex. The bees'
dance is basically an instinct-driven response to an external stimuli--
like our laughter, sneezes, or tears but unlike our words.

What about ape communication? Many people think that primates are
at a level of development only a few steps below that of humans. In
some parts of Indonesia people believe that apes don't speak because
they know that if they did humans would put them to work. As it turns
out, ape communication is no closer to human language than the
systems of bees and birds--it is a strictly limited, non-creative system.

First of all, the social context of primate communication in the wild is

completely different than for humans.

a) Among apes communication generally takes place within a single

social group composed of members of both sexes and of disparate
ages, who have spent most or all of their lives together. Attempts at
communication between complete strangers is very rare.

b) Primates, as a rule, have very good eyesight and much of their

communication is accomplished in gestures or body language. To
show dominance, a primate has a relaxed posture and walks with a
sort of swagger. The timid primate, by contrast, is tense and walks
with its back arched as if to spring away at any moment.

c) The meaning of gestures differs from species to species, even

slightly from group to group among the same species. Monkeys use a
grimace to signal aggression and hostility, while chimpanzees bare
their teeth as a form of greeting or reassurance. One species of
primates raised within the community of another species will come to
comprehend the other primate's signals but will only produce the
signals of its own species. This seems to indicate that primate
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communication systems, like those of bees and birds, are largely

instinctive rather than learned.

Let's generalize the similarities and differences between human and

animal communication?

Similarity. All systems of communication contain signs, units of form

with specific meaning (words). Human languages contain sound
symbols called words; animal systems use more varied formal media,
but each form is a sign conveying definite meaning.

a) Foxes have a system of 20 vocalizations.

b) Electric eels have a system of electric pulse signals

c) Spiders have an elaborate system of courtship gestures.

d) Scents and smells serve as signals for many other species.

Differences. For animals, the form of the signal may be visual,

auditory, olfactory, but each animal system differs entirely from all
human languages in six key ways.

1) The signs of animal systems are inborn. Birds, apes and bees
naturally and instinctively develop their species' signals, even if raised
in captivity and away from adults of their own species. Humans must
acquire language through exposure to a speech community (cf.
example of children picking up obscenities vs. a child getting a new
tooth). A Korean child adopted and raised in America won't
spontaneously develop Korean words or sentences in an all-English
speaking environment--or naturally develop a degraded form of
Korean. The words of human languages are definitely not inborn.
Rather, it seems that it is the capacity to acquire creative language
which is innate to humans. (Linguist Noam Chomsky calls this still
mysterious capacity the LAD, or language acquisition device.) The
actual form of any particular language is definitely not inborn and must
be acquired through prolonged exposure. No linguist disputes the fact
that a child of any ethnic origin can learn any language flawlessly if
raised in a community where that language is spoken. In acquiring a
human language, exposure to a speech community is all important;
racial or ethnic origin in themselves are completely unimportant.

2) Animal systems are set responses to stimuli. Animal communication

is here and now--used to express something more or less immediately
present in space and time. In other words, the signs of animal
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communication are used as indexes. As far as we know, animals can't

communicate about yesterday, about what might be or what wasn't. In
this way animal communication systems are not unlike the repertoire
of sounds of a 12 month old infant, who has a way of conveying
interest in something immediately present, or conveying emotional
responses such as discontent, loneliness, and a few other basic states
of being.

Human language is not purely a reflex triggered automatically by

external stimuli or internal emotional states. Human language can be
used as an index, just like animal communication, but it may also
exhibit what has been termed displacement. Humans can not only talk
about things that are absent but also about things that have never
been. Humans can invent myths and tell lies. Human language can be
used arbitrarily, with the stimulus deep within the speaker's psyche
and the topic not present or even non-existent. Animal languages can
only be used as a means of pointing to something directly present in
time and space.

3) In animal systems, each signal has one and only one function. More
than one sign cannot share the same meaning. For example, gorillas
in the wild have three types of signals which express danger, presence
of food, and desire for sex. The gibbon system of communication
consists of three signals: a signal for danger on the ground, another for
danger in a tree, and another for danger in the air; these three do not
overlap in meaning and each meaning can only be expressed by that
one sign.

In contrast the signs in human language usually have more than one
meaning; and each meaning can be expressed by more than one sign
(example with the word eye).

4) Animal signals are not naturally used in novel ways. Animal

systems are essentially non-creative. They cannot be used
metaphorically or figuratively. As far as we know, animals can't lie or
invent myths.

Human language is creative and can be used in novel ways. Two-year

old children can produce novel utterances they have never heard
before (*sheeps, *Daddy gived the book). By three, children regularly
produce sentences they have never heard before and regularly use
words in new, creative ways. Messages can be sent that have never
been heard before by the sender or by anyone else. Human languages
are infinitely creative in that a potentially limitless number of
messages can be sent.
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Unlike animals, humans can lie, they can use language to distort or
extend the world around them. Animal communication is based on a
limited inventory of signs. If you learn the set of signals and their
meaning then you know the system completely; there is no creativity
for extending it further. This is not the case with human language. If
you were to learn the entire set of words in any human language, you
would still not know the language.

5) Because they are non-creative, animal systems are closed

inventories of signs used to express a few specific messages only.
Honeybees, for instance, can communicate only about the location of a
source of nectar. As far as we know, bees do not communicate about
the weather or the beauty of nature, or gossip about other bees in the
hive.

Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity. Besides

containing word symbols, human languages are based a system of
patterns, or rules, called grammar.

Grammar can be defined as patterns with function but no specific

meaning: phonology (new sound combinations), morphology (new
words), syntax (new sentences). It is the grammar that allows
language signs to be used with virtually endless creatively.

Animal systems is limited to a strictly defined, finite range of possible

messages--there is never anything new because there is no abstract
level similar to human grammar.

6) Because they are non-creative, animal systems seem not to change

from generation to generation. Actually, they change extremely
slowly, over periods of many thousands of years, but as a result of
genetic drift rather than conscious innovation. (Compare the dialects
of the American redwing blackbird, and the dialects of the European
honeybee).

Because it is a vehicle for creativity, human language is very

changeable. Human language often changes quickly from generation
to generation. If you read Shakespeare, who wrote in the 16th
century, you will note that the use and meaning of many words has
changed. If you were to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written a
few centuries earlier, you would need to consult a dictionary of Middle
English to get through the text. And if you tried to read Beowulf in the
original, you would understand almost nothing; even a dictionary
wouldn't be enough to get you through the text. The English spoken
1000 years ago would seem a completely foreign language, at least as
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unintelligible to you as German or Icelandic. And roughly 7000 years

ago, the ancestors of such different languages as English, Italian, and
Russian were simply dialects of the one and the same language. And
40,000 years ago it is possible that the ancestral forms of such
disparate languages as Basque, Navajo, and Chinese may have been
dialects of the same language.

Animal languages also change, but they change with the slowness of
genetic drift. The minute differences between the dialects of the
European honeybee language, by contrast took perhaps 100,000 years
to develop. Human language changes more than that even during the
lifetime of each individual speaker (cf.: computer terminology; such
terms as "to impact," "to pig out"; also the changing pronunciation of
wh). Human language is constantly in flux; animal systems are
extremely stable.

What conclusions can we draw about naturally occurring animal

communication? We can say that the signs of animal communication
are more like inborn and involuntary human reactions such as
laughter, crying, and sneezing than they are like human language. As
far as we know humans have always had laughter and tears as natural
inborn responses--children develop them naturally and they don't
change from generation to generation--although, even here, humans
can use these responses deliberately and creatively, or suppress their
naturally-felt urges to express them.

TEACHING ANIMALS CREATIVE LANGUAGE. Animals clearly do not

have creative communication which could be called true language.
But can animals be taught to use creative human-style languages?
This question is still debated by linguists and natural scientists--but the
answer is probably no. Let's look at some of the evidence for and
against the presence of latent creative linguistic ability in animals.

Some birds have an almost uncanny capacity for mimicry.

Mockingbirds imitate the songs of other birds. Parrots and mynah
birds can render perfect imitations of the human voice. This shows
that the difference between human and animal languages is not due
merely to the specific structure of the human speech organs which
animals lack. Mynah bird can repeat "dad" and "bad" but cannot
produce a novel utterance "dab" by creatively rearranging the
elements in the former two words. In order to produce "dab" the
parrot would have to hear it and respond to it as a stimulus. A two-
year old child, by contrast, can invent new utterances based on the
elements of the ones he has already heard. A parrot, on the other
hand, can repeat "cat" and "cats", "dog" and "dogs", but if it hears the
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word "parrot" it will not be able to produce the form "parrots" by

analogy. (There is a report of an African gray parrot in Chicago who
can form plurals creatively, and says "Hello" and "Good-bye" at the
appropriate time. This seems to be a highly unusual instance if it is
true.)

Let's compare how children naturally form plurals of nouns creatively.

One child psychologist performed experiment with three-year old
children: showed a picture and called it a wug, then showed several of
them. The children all produced the plural "wugs".

This experiment seems to prove that the difference between human

and animal languages is in the brain rather than due to the specific
structure of the speech organs. If bird calls were put to use by humans
they could be used creatively and would cease being set responses to
certain stimuli only. On the contrary, if human signs are used by
parrots, they seem to be used as single isolated responses to things
present at the moment. In other words, they are indexes (indices) used
telegraphically.

What about apes? Can humans teach apes to use language

creatively? Unlike certain birds, apes clearly lack the vocal cord
apparatus necessary to imitate the actual sounds of human speech.
This is irrelevant, though, since the true language organ is the brain. Is
there a latent language capacity in the brains of our closest
evolutionary cousins? Once again, scientists disagree, although
experimentation so far suggests that apes have only very minor
amounts of ability to be creative with human-taught symbols.

a) In an experiment, two linguists from Berkeley, Beatrice and Allen

Gartner tried to teach a female chimp Washou to communicate using
colored blocks. By the age of 6 Washou had learned 100 signs but
couldn't put them together in novel ways or use them in the absence
of the given stimulus. In other words, each symbol was used as an
index.

b) Certain other experiments however, seem to indicate, that apes,

given extensive teaching and training by skilled scientists, evince a
limited capacity to be creative with symbols. (One ape supposedly
signed that a bagel was a "rock bracelet".) However, apes seem
incapable of acquiring a true grammar--a set of functional patterns
that can express unlimited meaning.

Human children, by contrast, learn language without being deliberately

taught by anyone at all. Even severely retarded children acquire
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language spontaneously from adults without any special teaching.

Thus we must conclude that animals--even the most clever apes, and,
yes, even cats, lack the cognitive mental apparatus to be infinitely
creative with communicative symbols. Humans--all humans--are
distinguished from all other species by an innate capacity acquire
grammar and create language.

And yet, linguists and psychologists still do not understand precisely

what this human language learning apparatus is. The question
remains a subject of intense scientific scrutiny and debate. One aspect
of that debate is--if humans evolved from apes--then how could
creative human language have evolved from stimulus and response
systems like those found in modern primates. Tomorrow we will discus
theories on the origin of human language.