Question

Why is the chemical communication exhibited in ants not considered to be language by psycholinguists?

a. It is not productive.

b. it shows syntax and semantics but lacks pragmatics.

c. only visual/mechanical communication is considered language.

d. it is too prone to error

Answer 1

The answer is "b".

Ants use scented chemical known as "pheromones" to communicate.These are located at the tip of super sensitive antennae. They become confused if these antannea are missing or damaged. There are different species dependant pheromones which are used to differentiate situations, family members, stangers and is understood by the ant colony. The lasting of these trails of chemicals, which convey different meanings also differ, for example a threat indicator may last longer from other indicators, hence there might be a confusion created or the situation is not understood according to the context.There is a possibility of mismatch in the interests of the sender and the receiver of the message. Human language possess uniqueness in its syntactic and proportional character.