Properties of languag

e
Linguistics

Yule's 5 characteristics of human languag

e

1. Displacement
2. This is the ability to use language to talk abo
ut times, places and people other than the h
ere and now. It also enables us to say things
which we know to be false i.e. to lie. Bees are
said to be able to convey some of this inform
ation in their dance which they employ to pa
ss on information about food sources.
3. Arbitrariness
4. This means that there is generally no natural,
inherent relationship between the signs (i.e. s

Arbitrariness also enables languages to evolve,

both in the sense that existing signs can come to
mean new things (e.g. pen which used to refer to
a quill), but also that new signs can be introduce
d for existing things. Animal languages, in contra
st, are more likely to have fixed reference i.e. a c
ertain sign has a specific and fixed meaning.

Productivity
This is an important characteristic of human lang
uage allowing us to continuously create new utte
rances, combining the building bricks of langua
ge in ever new ways, whether these be sounds,
words or sentences. Human languages are there
fore continually evolving.

Cultural Transmission
While we may inherit physical features such as b
rown eyes and dark hair from our parents, we do
not inherit their language. We acquire a languag
e in a culture with other speakers and not from p
arental genes. An infant born to Korean parents i
n Korea, but adopted and brought up from birth
by English speakers in the United States, will ha
ve physical characteristics inherited from his or h
er natural parents, but will inevitablyspeak Englis
h.

This process whereby a language is passed on f

rom one generation to the next is described as c
ultural transmission. It is clear that humans are b
orn with some kind of predisposition to acquire la
nguage in a general sense.
However, we are not born with the ability to prod
uce utterances in a specific language such as E
nglish. We acquire our first language as children
in a culture.

Duality

Duality (or double articulation) refers to two separate la

yers of language working together to provide us with a p
ool of sounds which we can combine to communicate wi
th one another. We have a limited number of discrete so
unds (e.g. the 44 phonemes in English) which in isolatio
n have no inherent meaning e.g. b, i, or n. On the other
hand, we have a virtually unlimited number of distinct m
eanings which we can create by combining these sound
s in certain ways e.g. bin, or nib. Various other combinati
ons such as *bni are not meaningful in English, but coul
d possibly be in other languages.

Other features of human language

A further feature of human language is reflexiven

ess, which means that we are able to use the lan
guage to talk about language which is typically
what linguists do. Discreteness is also somethin
g that is said to distinguish human languages fro
m other forms of animal communication. It mean
s that the sounds of a language differ sufficiently
from one another for a (native) speaker to distin
guish them and thereby know which sign with wh
ich meaning is being used at any one time.

Chimpanzees and language

In the 1930s, two scientists (Luella and Winthrop Kellogg) reported
on their experience of raising an infant chimpanzee together with th
eir baby son. The chimpanzee, called Gua, was reported to be able t
o understand about a hundred words, but did not say any of the
m. In the 1940s, a chimpanzee named Viki was reared by another s
cientist couple (Catherine and Keith Hayes) in their own home, exac
tly as if she was a human child. These foster parents spent five year
s attempting to get Viki to
say English words by trying to shape her mouth as she produced s
ounds. Viki eventually managed to produce some words, rather po
orly articulated versions of mama, papa and cup.

In retrospect, this was a remarkable achievemen

t since it has become clear that non-human prim
ates do not actually have a physically structured
vocal tract which is suitable for articulating the s
ounds used in speech.
Apes and gorillas can, like chimpanzees, comm
unicate with a wide range of vocal calls, but they
just cant make human speech sounds.

Washoe
Another scientist couple set out to teach a female chimp
anzee called Washoe to use a version of American Sign
Language.
From the beginning, the Gardners and their research ass
istants raised Washoe like a human child in a comfortabl
e domestic environment. Sign language was always use
d when Washoe was around and she was encouraged to
use signs, even her own incomplete baby-versions of t
he signs used by adults.

In a period of three and a half years, Washoe ca

me to use signs for more than a hundred words,
ranging from airplane, baby and banana through
to window, woman and you
Washoe also demonstrated understanding of a
much larger number of signs than she produced
and was capable of holding rudimentary convers
ations,mainly in the form of questionanswer se
quences.

Sarah and Lana

Another chimpanzee was being taught (by the Premack
couple ) to use a set of plastic shapes for communicatin
g with humans. These plastic shapes represented word
s that could be arranged in sequence to build sentence
s (Sarah preferred a vertical order).
The basic approach was different from tthe Gardners'. S
arah was systematically trained to associate these shape
s with objects or actions. She remained an animal in a ca
ge, being trained with food rewards to manipulate a set o
f symbols. Once she had learned to use a large number
of these plastic shapes, Sarah was capable of getting an
apple by selecting the correct plastic shape (a blue triang
le) from a large array

Notice that this symbol is arbitrary since it would be hard to argue fo

r any natural connection between an apple and a blue plastic triangl
e. Sarah was also capable of producingsentences such as Mary gi
ve chocolate Sarah and had the impressive capacity to understand
complex structures such as If Sarah put red on green, Mary give Sar
ah chocolate. Sarah got the chocolate.
A similar training technique with another artificial language was used
(by Duane Rumbaugh) to train a chimpanzee called Lana. The lang
uage she learned was called Yerkish and consisted of a set of symb
ols on a large keyboard linked to a computer.
When Lana wanted some water, she had to press four symbols, in t
he correct sequence, to produce the message please machine give
water.

Both Sarah and Lana demonstrated an ability to use wha

t look like word symbols and basic structures in ways tha
t resemble the use of language. There is, a lot of skeptic
ism regarding these apparent linguistic skills. It has been
pointed out that when Lana used the symbol for please
she did not have to understand the meaning of the Engli
sh word please. The symbol for please on the compute
r keyboard might simply be the equivalent of a button on
a vending machine and, so the argument goes, we could
learn to operate vending machines without knowing lang
uage.

The controversy
On the basis of his work with another chimpanzee called Nim, the ps
ychologist Herbert Terrace argued that chimpanzees simply produce
signs in response to the demands of people and tend to repeat sign
s those people use, yet they are treated (by naive researchers) as if
they are taking part in a conversation. As in many critical studies of
animal learning, the chimpanzees behavior is viewed as a type of c
onditioned response to cues provided (often unwittingly) by human t
rainers. Herberts conclusion
was that chimpanzees are clever creatures who learn to produce a c
ertain type of behavior (signing or symbol selection) in order to get r
ewards and are essentially performing sophisticated tricks

In response, the Gardners argued

that
they were not animal trainers, nor were they inculcating and then eli
citing conditioned responses from Washoe. They showed that in the
absence of any human, Washoe could produce correct signs to iden
tify objects in pictures. They also emphasize a major difference betw
een the experiences of Washoe and Nim. While Nim was kept in a w
indowless cell as a research animal and had to deal with a lot of diff
erent research assistants who were often not fluent in American Sig
n Language, Washoe lived in a domestic environment with opportu
nities for imaginative play and interaction with fluent signers who we
re also using sign language with each other. They also report that an
other group of younger chimpanzees not only learned sign languag
e, but also occasionally used signs with each other and with Washo
e, sometimes with no humans present

Kanzi
As observed by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi, a Bonobo(pygmy chimpan
zee) seemed to be using using the Yerkish symbol system with great eas
e. He had learned not by being taught, but by being exposed to, and observi
ng, a kind of language in use at a very early age. Kanzi eventually develope
d a large symbol vocabulary (over 250 forms). By the age of eight, he was r
eported to be able, through the association of symbols with spoken words, t
o demonstrate understanding of spoken English at a level comparable to a t
wo-and-a-half-year-old human child.

There was also evidence that he was using a consistently distinct se

t of gentle noises as words to refer to things such as bananas, gra
pes and juice. He had also become capable of using his symbol syst
em to ask to watch his favorite movies, Quest for Fire
(about primitive humans) and Greystoke (about the Tarzan legend

Using language
Were Washoe and Kanzi capable of taking part in
interaction with humans by using a symbol syste
m chosen by humans and not chimpanzees? The
answer is clearly Yes. Did Washoe and Kanzi go
on to perform linguistically on a level comparable
to a human child about to begin pre-school? The
answer is just as clearly No. In arriving at these
answers, we have also had to face the fact that, e
ven with our list of key properties, we still dont se
em tohave a non-controversial definition of what c
ounts as using language

In one situation, we look at the behavior of a two-year-old human c

hild interacting with a caregiver as an example of using language .
In another situation, we observe very similar behavior from chimpan
zees and bonobos when they are interacting with humans they kno
w. It has to be fair to say that, in both cases, we observe the particip
ants using language.
However, there is a difference. The two-year-old has the capacity t
o develop a highly complex system of sounds and structures, plus a
set of computational procedures, that will allow the child to produce
extended discoursecontaining a infinite number of novel utterances.
No other creature has been observed using language in this sens
e. It is in this more fundamental or abstract sense that we say that la
nguage is uniquely human