The Design Features of Human Language and Communication

1. What Makes Language different? Design Features of Human Language

2. Communicate transitive verb 1a: to convey knowledge of or information about. b: to reveal by clear sign. 2: to cause to pass from one to another. Some diseases are easily communicated. intransitive verb 1: to transmit information, thought, or feeling so that it is satisfactorily received or understood  2: to open into each other : The rooms communicate. 3: to receive Communion Derivation: Latin communicatus, past participle of communicare to impart, participate, from communis common https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communicate; accessed 2 September, 2019

3. Communication among ants Scent (pheromones) Touch Body language Sound

4. Scent Ants have more types of odor receptors (app. 400) than any other insect. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/09/10/ants-have-an-exceptionally-high-def-sense-of-smell/; accessed 1 Sept. 2019 Scanning electron microscope image of one of the antennae of a female Indian jumping ant (Harpegnathos saltator). (photograph by Anandasankar Ray)

5. Argentine ant (Linepithemahumile) • Recent import from South America • Outcompetes other ants • “Supercolonies” in Europe, North America, and Australia

6. Bee Communication • Odor plume • Dance communication European honey bees (Apis mellifera)

8. Lemurs • Communication channels • Visual • Aural • Olfactory

9. AND the great apes? Orangutans Gorillas Bonobos Chimpanzees

11. Language 1a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community studied b(1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs (2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings (4) : the means by which animals communicate (5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (such as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions (6) : machine language 2a : form or manner of verbal expression specifically b : the vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge 3 : the study of language especially as a school subject 4 : specific words especially in a law or regulation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/language; accessed 3 September 2019

12. What makes human Language so human? • Charles Hockett’s goal: • identify the features that are unique to human language • Started with thirteen features Charles Hockett(1916-2000)

13. Design Features of Language • Vocal/auditory channel – uses vocal apparatus and ears • Broadcast transmission / directional reception – sent in all directions; source can be discerned • Rapid fading – signal is (very) impermanent • Interchangeability – a person can say what they just heard

14. Design Features of Language • Total feedback – a person can monitor themselves as they speak • Specialization – sounds are used only for language purposes • Semanticity – signals can be match to meanings • Arbitrariness – sounds do not have an intrinsic relationship to their meanings

15. Design Features of Language • Discreteness – sounds are separate units /p/ versus /b/ • Displacement – can speak about what is not here and not now • Productivity – human language is an open system; new utterances can be made form old ones • Traditional transmission – learned from others

16. Design Features of Language • Duality of patterning – meaningless phonemes can be infinitely combined into words / k + æ + t + s / • Prevarication –falsehoods, lies, and meaningless statements • Reflexiveness – Language can be used to discuss language

17. Design Features of Language • Learnability – a speaker of one language can learn another language • Grammaticality – a speaker follows rules when they produce sounds

18. Which of These Are Unique to Humans?