‫ملخص خاص ( إلتقان) ال أسمح وال احلل نشره‬

‫(اتقان ) ‪0502605694‬‬
Human and animal
language
 communication

communicative signals informative signals

‫إشارإت معلوماتية‬
‫إشارإت توإصلية‬

I have cold

I am sad
Laughing – smiling
 Communicative are intentionally
‫اشارات تواصلية‬ ‫مقصودة‬

Informative Signals are not intentionally \ unintentionally

‫اشارات معلوماتية‬ ‫غير مقصودة‬ ‫غير مقصودة‬
 Language
is the use of a shared set of signs or symbols
within a society
To interact and express their feelings ,ideas and emotions

Written or signs
 Animals
Some animals are known to ‘communicate’ through
sounds and signals.

• Birds sing
• cats miaow
• dogs bark

Animals way of communication

is quite limited
in comparison with human system of communication.
 5
characteristics\ feature\properties

of human language
Yule’s 5 characteristics of human language

‫غير محددة الزمان والمكان‬ 1. Displacement

‫تعسفية‬ 2. Arbitrariness

‫إنتاجية‬ 3. Productivity

‫انتقال الثقافات‬ 4. Cultural Transmission

‫ازدواجية‬ 5. Duality
1. Displacement

Is the ability to use language to talk about

times, places

It also enables us to say things which we

know to be false
 2. Arbitrariness

generally no natural, inherent relationship between

the signs (i.e. sounds or letters) we produce and fat

their meaning
small

no natural relationship\connection between

the signs and their meaning

when language tries to mirror or ‘echo’
the sounds made by animals and objects cuckoo ticktock

called onomatop(o)eia

enables languages to evolve, both in the (e.g. pen which

sense that existing signs can come to used to refer to a quill)
mean new things, but also that new signs
can be introduced for existing things.

Animal languages, in contrast, are more likely to have fixed

reference i.e. a certain sign has a specific and fixed meaning.
 3. Productivity

• allows users to create new utterances

• allows users to create new expressions

also called

Creativity

open-endedness
 4. Cultural Transmission

• This refers to how languages are acquired by our children.

• There is no genetic component which enable a child to start

speaking e.g. English

for example,
that a child born in Korea to Korean parents but then adopted by
French parents in France will tend to grow up speaking French as
his/her first language and not Korean

e.g. dogs will bark even if they have never heard another dog.
 ‫ازدواجية‬ Duality
Human language is organized at two levels

. 1. Individual sounds:
C , r, a
these sounds have no meaning

2. Combination of sounds:
‫قوس‬arc - ‫سيارة‬Car
we have another level producing meaning.
Chimpanzees & languages
 Experiments with chimpanzees

• Gua
• Viki
• Washoe
• Sara & Lana
• Nim
• Kanzi
 Gua & Viki
• 1930s - Luella and Kellogg raised an
infant chimpanzee together with
their baby son.
– The chimpanzee, called Gua, was
reported to be able to
understand about a 100 words,
but did not “say” any of them.
 Gua & Viki
• 1940s - a chimpanzee “ Viki” was reared
by Catherine and Keith Hayes- exactly as
if she was a human child.
• After 5 years, Viki eventually managed to
produce some words, rather
poorly articulated versions of mama,
papa and cup.
• Apes and gorillas can, like
chimpanzees, communicate with a
wide range of vocal calls, but they
just can’t make human speech
sounds .
Apes and gorillas can, like
chimpanzees, communicate with a
wide range of vocal calls, but they just
can’t make human speech sounds
 Washoe

• Beatrix and Allen Gardner raised a female

chimpanzee called Washoe to use a version of
American Sign Language.
• After 3 to 4 years, Washoe came to use signs for
more than a 100 words, ranging from airplane,
baby and banana through to window, woman and
you.
• Even more impressive was Washoe’s ability to
take these forms and combine them to
produce “sentences”
 Washoe

• Some of the forms appear to have been inventions by Washoe-

which would seem to indicate that her communication system
had the potential for productivity.
• Washoe also demonstrated understanding of a much larger
number of signs than she produced and was capable of holding
simple conversations, mainly in the form of question–
answer sequences.
• A similar ability with sign language was reported by Francine
Patterson working with a gorilla named Koko not long after
 Sarah & Lana

• Ann and David Premack taught “Sarah” to

communicate by using a set of plastic shapes
representing “words” that could be arranged in
sequence to build “sentences” (Sarah preferred a
vertical order).
• Sarah was systematically trained to associate these
shapes with objects or actions. She remained an animal
in a cage, being trained with food rewards to
manipulate a set of symbols. This set is arbitrary
 Sarah & Lana

• Sarah was capable of producing “sentences” such as

Mary give chocolate Sarah and had the impressive
capacity to understand complex structures such
as If Sarah put red on green, Mary give Sarah
chocolate. Sarah got the chocolate. Figure 2.2.
 Sarah & Lana
• A similar training technique with another artificial
language was used (by Duane Rumbaugh) to train a
chimpanzee called Lana.
• The language she learned was called Yerkish and
consisted of a set of symbols on a large keyboard
linked to a computer.
• When Lana wanted some water, she had to press four
symbols, in the correct sequence, to produce the
message please machine give water. Figure 2.3
• Both Sarah and Lana demonstrated an ability to use
what look like word symbols and basic structures in
ways that superficially resemble the use of language –
though a lot of doubt regarding these apparent
linguistic skills.
 The Controversy – Nim
• Another chimpanzee “Nim” was taught by the psychologist Herbert Terrace.
• Herbert’s conclusion was that chimpanzees are clever creatures who learn to
produce a certain type of behavior (signing or symbol selection) in order to
get rewards and are essentially performing sophisticated “tricks.”
• Gardners argued that they were not animal trainers, nor were they
inculcating and then eliciting conditioned responses from Washoe. In
complex experiments, designed to eliminate any possible provision of cues by
humans, they showed that in the absence of any human, Washoe could
produce correct signs to identify objects in pictures.
• They also emphasize a major difference between the experiences of Washoe
and Nim.
• They also report that another group of younger chimpanzees not only
learned sign language, but also occasionally used signs with each other and
with Washoe, even when there were no humans present.
 Kanzi
• While Sue Savage-Rumbaugh was attempting to train a bonobo (a
chimpanzee) called Matata how to use the symbols of Yerkish,
Matata’s adopted baby, Kanzi, was always with her.
• Although Matata did not do very well, her son Kanzi spontaneously
started using the symbol system with great ease. He had learned
not by being taught, but by being exposed to, and observing, a kind
of language in use at a very early age.
• Kanzi eventually developed a large symbol vocabulary (over 250
forms). By the age of eight, he was reported to be able, through the
association of symbols with spoken words, to demonstrate
understanding of spoken English at a level comparable to a two-
and-a-half-year-old human child.
• There was also evidence that he was using a consistently distinct set
of “gentle noises as words to refer to things such as bananas,
grapes and juice. He had also become capable of using his symbol
system to ask to watch his favorite movies, Quest for Fire (about
primitive humans) and Greystoke (about the Tarzan legend).
 Using Langauge
• Chimpanzees could take part in interaction with human
• Washoe and Kanzi didn’t go on to perform linguistically on
a level comparable to a human child about to begin pre-
school.
• “using language”
• In a very broad sense, both humans & animals like
chimpanzees are“using language.”
• Yet, the two-year-old’s communicative activity is the
capacity to develop a highly complex system of sounds and
structures, plus a set of computational procedures, that will
allow the child to produce extended discourse containing a
potentially infinite number of novel utterances. No other
creature has been observed “using language” in this sense.
• It is in this more fundamental or abstract sense that we say
that language is uniquely human.
Any Question?

Thank you