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How Far is Language a Uniquely Human Attribute?
The research findings of Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin (1994) on non-human primates provide a challenging starting point for linguists to question to what extent language can be classified as a particularly human phenomenon. Even though Savage-Rumbaugh grants that higher primates trasare not language users ‘as linguistic orthodoxy demands’, she recommends that ‘the detection of elements of language’ be acknowledged as indicative of some sense of continuity (cf. Savage-Rumbaugh 1994, pp.9, 157, 164).
When linguists have addressed the challenge of specifying the tertium comparisionis between human and animal communication, their reflections have served to sharpen their analytic focus. Pinker (1994) finds fault with the continuity theory because ‘the human-chimp ancestor evolved … from an even older ancestor of the two, also extinct’ (p. 343).
Bickerton maintains that ‘children acquire protolanguage before they move on to language … [while] ‘the great apes … can be taught to manage protolanguage but not language’ (quoted in Trask and Mayblin 2000: p. 164).
Dobrovolsky (1997) reiterates Savage-Rumbaugh’s stance (cf. 1994: p. 163) that ‘what we call language reflects a cognitive difference in degree and not in kind between humans and [the] animals’ … and adds that future research will reveal ‘what is truly unique about human linguistic ability’ (p. 655).
For the purposes of identifying unique assumption that inner language aspects of language among humans, dissimilarities to higher primates can be clearly discerned in physiology, in how language is learned and between significant language features in non-human primate communicative behaviour and human language.
Although non-human primates can produce vocal calls, they are physiologically ill-equipped to produce and use human speech sounds in human ways (cf. Pinker 1994: pp. 334-35; Bickerton 1995: p. 55; Trask 2003: pp. 16-18, 23). They do, however, use bodily behaviour as a form of communication both in the wild and in captivity. Studies by Savage-Rumbaugh (1994), for example, have documented that non-human primates can use their hands (and their feet) to fulfil communicative tasks set by researchers (cf. Dobrovolsky 1997: p. 648; Pinker 1994: p. 340).
You can get expert help with your essays right now. Find out more...By contrast, so-called ‘healthy’ members of the family of man are both anatomically equipped to produce speech sounds and to use gestures to augment their purpose in communicative interaction. Although the hearing-impaired are restricted to the realm of sight and consequently compelled to use sign language in face-to-face communication - leaving writing aside, because they cannot produce an effective range of speech sounds, - they can use gestures with more finesse than those who are not hearing-impaired.
In terms of the diversity of gestures and their functions, the deaf reveal far more facility and complexity in their use of sign language than the non-human primates’ approximations of American Sign Language (ASL) (Trask 2003: p. 24; cf. Pinker 1994: p. 337) and significantly more than some of their hearing companions who have not mastered a sign language. For linguists, the physiological prerequisites for the production of speech sounds have been identified as uniquely human, while the limitations caused by a congenital hearing deficiency, an acquired hearing impairment or a gradual loss of hearing can be mitigated by learning a language such as ASL.
Learning a language implies firstly that the active language skills of speaking and writing are neither fully developed at birth nor does the initial ability to use a language suddenly emerge later all at once. Some linguists posit a physiological and cognitive predisposition in humans to acquire language (Pinker 1994: p. 334; Trask 2003: p. 18). On the question of learning, Pinker is empathic when he writes that ‘[a]pes did not learn any true ASL signs’ (1994: p. 337). Bickerton claims that non-human primates are capable of coping with protolanguage (Trask and Mayblin 2000: p. 164).
Bickerton also maintains that the vervet monkeys’ calls may have the status of ‘protowords’ (Bickerton 1995: p.53). Assuming that non-human primate communicative behaviour can be interpreted as the use of ‘protolanguage’, the questions remain i) whether protolanguage is innate or learned and ii) if it is learned, how it is learned. The remarkable case of Kanzi having ‘learned’ to use signs of a protolanguage by observing the training of his mother could be explained as a mediated form of conditioning and not as necessarily paradigmatic for teaching methodology at school.
Pinker and Bickerton are both generally consistent throughout their discussions when they describe the acquisition process in animals as training or conditioning and not as instruction. Within the scope of protolanguage, the animals in the studies have been reported to have ‘learned’ to use rules in combinations of signs to distinguish between subject and object relations in rudimentary forms of syntax, such that they are said to be at par with a two-year-old child on the syntax acquisition curve (Pinker 1994: p. 339 ).
Yet, research in animal studies and linguists both agree that non-human primates’ language learning potential is halted at that stage. In contrast to non-human primates, toddlers are unique in being able to develop their language potential exponentially when they can begin to explore the world on their own terms as they enter the flux between protolanguage and language.
The sequencing patterns of acquired symbolic behaviour observed in animal studies (Savage-Rumbaugh 1994: pp. 158-59) drew the attention of linguists to comparisons with the use of grammar among humans. Having assessed the use of protogrammar in animal studies, linguists concluded that the differences outweighed the similarities.
According to Pinker (1994) the non-human primates reveal ‘next to nil’ grammar (p. 339), no use of inflection (p.339), and their animal behaviour, which would entail syntax behaviour, if any, is in Wilson’s words ‘ “repetitious to the point of inanity” ’ (quoted in Pinker 1994: p. 340). Aitchison’s reflections on emergent grammar in Nim and Victor as a ‘default’ process of rule-formation starting from preferences and progressively leading to habits and the development of stabile rule-governed sequences in categorical structures strongly suggest that not only do we adhere to an innate cognitive predisposition, but also that the animals in the studies have been trained to conform to our default (1996: pp. 116-17).
Find out how our expert essay writers can help you with your work...Non-human primates have been trained to use a set of between ‘two and three hundred signs’ (Pinker 1994: p. 335; Trask 2003: p. 25) and gestures and to use them in a number of communicative tasks (cf. Bickerton 1995: p. 55; Dobrovolsky 1997: p. 654) the epitome of which was using ‘productive rules’ (Savage-Rumbaugh 1994: p. 159); however, that seems to be their limit. Monitoring children at around the age of two as they develop and differentiate their command of syntactic patterns has also shown that toddlers learn to progress through degrees of complexity that preclude fair comparisons with non-human primates (Trask 2003: p. 25; Pinker 1994: p. 339).
To describe language as a uniquely human attribute, as Dobrovolsky concludes, involves investigating degrees of differences. Bickerton’s notion of protolanguage is instructive since it is postulated as prior to language in the order of cognition and permits inquiry into the emergence of language elements in human infants, and more importantly it distinguishes their unique development from the protolanguage of non-humans.
Although many people can neither produce nor perceive speech sounds, it is, nonetheless, unique that human speech sounds cannot be produced in human ways by higher primates primarily because they lack the necessary physiological conditions. Attempts at comparing non-human primates with children have shown how rapidly the pace of language acquisition among the latter quickens and how difficult it is to ignore how dramatically the gap widens phylogenetically.
The rate of development among children is not an attribute that is shared with the non-human primates. The complexity of gestures in sign languages as well as the complexity of syntactic structures signifies the most linguistically relevant aspect of yet another distinguishing feature. And it is perhaps somewhat of an irony that the import of animal research has contributed to substantiating the persistent linguistic intuition that language is a uniquely human attribute.
References
Aitchison, Jean. 1996. The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution.
Cambridge: CUP.
Bickerton, Derek. 1995. Language and Human Behaviour. London: UCL Press.
Dobrovolsky, Michael. 1997. “Animal Communication” in Contemporary
Linguistics: An Introduction. Ed. O’Grady, William, Dobrovolsky, Michael and Katamba, Francis. 3rd edn. London: Longman.
Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language of Instinct: The New Science of Language and
the Mind. London: Penguin.
Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue and Lewin, Roger. 1994. Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of
the Human Mind. London: Transworld.
Trask, R.L. 2003. Language: The Basics. 1999. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Trask, R.L. and Mayblin, Bill. 2000. Introducing Linguistics. Cambridge: Icon.
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