THE UNIQUENESS OF
HUMAN LANGUAGE
ANIMAL VS. HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Properties of lg (design features of lg)
" viewed as an attempt to define what lg is
" the idea of design features of lg was introduced by the
American linguist Charles Hockett; both Hockett and
others have occasionally proposed modifications to
Hockett s original list of 16 features, and several versions
of the list can be found
" Design features = a number of essential characteristics of
human lg, language being the most remarkable and
unique faculty that human beings possess
ARBITRARINESS
" the absence of any necessary connection between a
linguistic form and its meaning; the actual signals used in
human lg bear no resemblance at all to the things they
stand for
" the relationship between a linguistic form and its
meaning is a matter of social agreement: no word is
intrinsically better suited to naming a particular thing
than any other, though each is perfectly adequate as long
as speakers agree about it
ARBITRARINESS continued
" such agreement need not be for all time: formerly swine, now pig; the
decision as to which words shall have which meanings is entirely a
matter of convention, and conventions can and do change;
" Arbitrariness and iconicity - iconicity as a direct correlation between
form and meaning;
" examples of iconicity are provided by instances of onomatopoeia 
the representation of sounds by words of similar sound, e.g. splash,
clink, buzz, meow, moan, moo, quack, boom represent attempts to
reproduce real-world sounds with English phonemes; but even these
onomatopoeic items still exhibit a great deal of arbitrariness 
examples?
OPEN ENDEDNESS (productivity or
creativity)
" our ability to use lg to say anything at all, including
lots of things we ve never said or seen before  our
ability to produce and understand new utterances
virtually without limit
DUALITY (of patterning)
" every human lg makes use of 2 largely independent
subsystems, one of sounds and the other of meanings
" this feature enables a small number of elements of one
subsystem (the phonemes, i.e. roughly sounds) to be
combined and recombined into units and patterns of
meaning (the morphemes and syntax, i.e. roughly words
and sentences) in the other subsystem
" duality is the use of a small number of meaningless
elements in combination to produce a large number of
meaningful elements
" regardless of the number of speech sounds used, every
human lg is built on the principle of duality
DISPLACEMENT
" the use of lg to talk about things other than the here and
now: it allows people to construct messages about the
past, present and future, and also about real and
imaginary worlds
" it allows the users of lg to talk about things and events
not present in the immediate environment; it enables us
to talk about things and places whose existence we
cannot even be sure of
STIMULUS-FREEDOM
" the ability to say anything we like in any context;
" generally, there s no connection between words
and the situations in which they are used such
that occurrence of particular words is predictable
from the situations themselves
CULTURAL (TRADITIONAL) TRANSMISSION
" lg is passed on from one generation to the next
" the specific lg a child acquires depends on the linguistic
group into which that child is born; no one is genetically
programmed to acquire a specific lg, although we might
be programmed to acquire some lg
" all lgs are equally learnable as far as children are
concerned
REFLEXIVENESS
" it refers to the use of language to talk about
language, i.e., the system can be used to say
something about the uses and characteristics of
the system
" it allows us to develop a  metalanguage
PREVARICATION
" it refers to the possible use of the system to
mislead others deliberately false
ANIMAL COMMUNICATION
" can non-humans understand lg?
" can non-humans  talk ?
ANIMAL COMMUNICATION
" an animal s particular behaviour in response
to a particular sound-stimulus
EXPERIMENTS WITH CHIMPANZEES
" chimps and humans as closely related species:
99% of chimps basic genetics in common with
humans
" chimps raised with or as humans babies: Gua
(raised with Donald; at the end of the
experiment, Gua could understand ca. 95 words,
Donald  107); Viki (18 months could produce
 mama , then  papa ,  cup and  up , however,
poor articulation, some understanding of human
speech;
EXPERIMENTS WITH CHIMPS - continued
" Washoe  taught American Sign Language (ASL)
" raised like a human child
" after 3,5 yrs, W. learned to use signs for more than
100 words, could produce sentences
" showed some creativity: her word  bib for  water
bird
" understood more signs than could produce
" later, when living in an ape colony, taught Loulis
some signs
EXPERIMENTS WITH GORILLAS - continued
" Koko: http://www.koko.org/
The uniqueness of human lg  the biological
evidence for innate lg capacity
" to investigate the issue of human beings  exclusivity for lg -
necessary to look at structural and physiological adaptations
of human beings related to lg; we are going to see that
human lungs, teeth, lips and vocal cords have evolved in such
a way as to facilitate speech
" human teeth: unusual if compared with those of other
animals  even in height, upright, not slanting outwards, and
the bottom and the top set meet; such regularity is certainly
not necessary for eating, but for the articulation of a number
of sounds, e.g. s, f, v, sh or th
the biological evidence for innate lg capacity
- continued
" the mouth: considerably more developed muscles of
lips; the mouth is relatively small and can be opened
and shut rapidly Ä…ð makes it simple to pronounce p
and b ; the tongue  thick, muscular and mobile (as
opposed to monkeys tongues) thanks to which the
size of the cavity can be varied, allowing a range of
vowels to be pronounced
the biological evidence for innate lg capacity
- continued
" the larynx: simpler in structure than that of other
primates, but this is an advantage: air can move
freely past and then out through the nose and
mouth; but humans pay for this: a monkey can seal
its mouth from its windpipe and breathe while it is
eating; humans cannot do this so we often choke on
food
the biological evidence for innate lg capacity
- continued
" the lungs: nothing peculiar in the structure but our
breathing seems to be adapted to speech: no
breathing problems while talking; no one has to
instruct a child in the breathing adaptations required
for talking
the biological evidence for innate lg capacity
- continued
" the brain: pre-programmed for lg; lateralisation  the
localisation of lg to one half of the brain- is a natural
biologically-based phenomenon; animals central
nervous systems are inadequate for speech  there
are fewer neural connections between the mouth
and the brain
the biological evidence for innate lg capacity
- continued
" multiplicity of processes that are taking place in
speech production and comprehension;
simultaneous integration of those processes
essential
REFERENCES
Trask, R. L., 1995 Language: The Basics. Routledge:
London & New York.
Wardhaugh, R., 1993 Investigating Language.
Blackwell: Oxford UK & Cambridge US
Yule, G. 1985. The Study of Language. CUP.