Question

Provide evidence to argue that chimpanzees (or dogs or bees or birds or dolphins….) can acquire SOME aspects of human languages, but not all. Be sure to define “language” in your answer and to specify what aspects of language you are focusing on. Also state clearly WHICH aspects you think they can acquire and why, and which aspects they cannot acquire – and why not. The clearer and more detailed your examples and claims, the better.

Answer 1

human language is very complex and has become a part of human nature. there are two parts of human language: verbal and non-verbal communication. the verbal language involves both receptive and productive use. Receptive language use occurs during the comprehension or understanding of words and sentences. Productive language use involves idea generation and the articulation of words in speech. reception and production involves phonology, grammar, semantics and pragmatics.

the vocal element of nonverbal communication is paralanguage, which is the vocalized but not verbal part of a spoken message, such as speaking rate, volume, and pitch. Nonvocal elements of verbal communication include the use of unspoken symbols to convey meaning.

when it comes to acquiring language, there have been many claims but the evidence clearly states no.

1. Human beings use their linguistic resources to produce new expressions and sentences. They arrange and rearrange phonemes, morphemes, words, and phrases in a way that can express an infinite number of ideas. Animal communication is a closed system. It cannot produce new signals to communicate novel events or experiences.

2. human language is considered context-free, whereas animal communication is mostly context bound. Human beings can talk about real or imaginary situations, places, or objects far removed from their present surroundings and time. Other animals, on the other hand, communicate in reaction to a stimulus in the immediate environment, such as food or danger.

3. Human language is interchangeable between sexes. But certain communications in the animal world are performed only by one gender. For example, bee dancing is only performed by worker bees, which are female.

4. The signs, or words, in language, have no inherent connection to what they signify or mean (that's why one object can have so many names in different languages). Animal communication is not symbolic, which means ideas cannot be preserved for the future.

5. Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee named after noted linguist Noam Chomsky, who was taught over 100 signs in sign language in the '70s. Turning hand gestures into meaning certainly display arbitrariness. But Herbert Terrace, the psychology that led the study doubted that Nim had really learned a language. He noted that Nim very rarely signed spontaneously; instead, he would react to signs his teacher was making.

6. Luella & Winthrop Kellogg – 1930s: Raised an infant chimpanzee (Gua) with their baby son. Gua- was able to understand 100 words but did not produce any.

7. Human beings, as Aristotle observed and Descartes reiterated, are animals with a language. And language here is also logos, that is, logic or rationality. And experience teaches us that these are absent from the rest of the animal kingdom.

8. Another essential characteristic of our language is its normativity—namely, the fact that there are right and wrong uses of a word or phrase. We understand, for instance, that we used a certain word wrongly, or that we don’t yet know how to use it. Animals’ use of language does not have this aspect. An animal might use a sign the way we intended it to be used, or it might not yet use the sign that way. But the animal itself cannot understand that it doesn’t know how to use the sign or that it has used it incorrectly.

9. the biological reason that animals cant acquire language. a research study talked about the evolution of gene FOX2P. Animals contain the non-speech version of the FOX2P gene. This was discovered through research into the 'KE' family of Britain as some members had this non-speech FOX2P and their 'speech' was unintelligible, i.e., physiologically their tongues and mouths could not function to produce language sounds. the research related to the human genome project indicated the speech version of FOX2P gene came into existence about 150,000 years ago - likely through mutation.  

10. this is still an ongoing debate as domestic animals do understand some part of human language and can respond to it sometimes. for example, the husky saying making the sound of hello. but this is more to do than imitation, then learning to speak sentences.