SPECIES SPECIFICITY

The notion that language is unique to the human race and that other types of animal communication differ markedly from it in terms of form and content. The issue is not whether other species can acquire speech; they do not have the appropriate vocal apparatus. It is whether they are cognitively capable of acquiring or using a complex symbolic system such as language.

There are four main ways in which species specificity can be investigated:

Design features. We can determine exactly what characterises language and then establish if those features are present in other forms of animal communication. Here, Hockett’s design features have provided a valuable benchmark. While some of the features are present in animal communication, it is clear that no form has more than a very few.

Brain structure. If a human being has some kind of genetically transmitted capacity for language, then we might expect to find evidence of it by comparing the human brain with those of other primates. However, attempts to locate a specific locus for an innate language faculty have not been successful, and evidence from brain imaging suggests that the operations associated with language are widely distributed throughout the brain. It was once suggested that lateralisation (the dominance of one hemisphere of the human brain) might be related specifically to our possession of language. However, other species including birds and frogs have been shown to possess a dominant hemisphere (usually the left) associated with vocalisation or rapid auditory processing but clearly not with language. Attention has therefore focused on those areas of the human brain which are larger relative to the whole organ than they are in other primates. But perhaps most critical of all is the much greater control that the human brain is able to exercise over the operation of the larynx. This enables us to co-ordinate breathing and vocalisation and is an important factor in the ability to produce speech.

Teaching other species to use language. Unambiguous evidence that a chimp can acquire a complex form of language would challenge nativist theories. The hypothesis of an innate human language faculty might have to be rejected in favour of a view that acquiring a language depends entirely upon input or that language maps on to established cognitive operations which human beings share with other primates. Alternatively, it would have to be accepted that the innate language mechanism is not specifically human. Chimps might share the mechanism in some form, but lack a genetically transmitted trigger which activates it as part of the normal process of maturation.

There has been some limited success in training chimps and other primates to acquire simple semantic categories. However, it may not be appropriate to base hard and fast conclusions on the ability of other species to acquire a system which is quintessentially a product of the human mind and not of their own.

 See also: Animal communication, Brain: human vs animal, Chimp studies, Design features, Evolution of language

 Further reading: Aitchison (1998); Deacon (1997)

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مواضيع ذات صلة

Problems with the dictionary view

The dictionary view

Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias

The encyclopaedic view of meaning

Embodiment and conceptual structure summary

Schematic systems

Semantic structure

Conceptual structure

Image schemas and abstract thought

Properties of image schemas

What is an image schema?

Image schemas