10.1.3: Characteristic Features

What is a language? What kinds of languages do exist? Are there characteristic features that are unique in human language?

There are plenty of approaches how to describe languages. Especially in computational linguistics, researchers try to find formal definitions for different kinds of languages. But for psychology other aspects of language than its function as pure system of communication are of central interest. Language is also a tool we use for social interactions starting with the exchange of news up to the identification of social groups by their dialect. We use it for expressing our feelings, thoughts, ideas etc.

Although there are plenty ways to communicate (consider Non-Human-Language) humans expect their system of communication - the human language to be unique. But what is it that makes the human language so special and unique?

Four major criteria have been proposed by Professor Franz Schmalhofer from the University of Osnabrück as explained below:

• semanticity
• displacement
• creativity
• structure dependency

Semanticity means the usage of symbols. Symbols can either refer to objects or to relations between objects. In the human language words are the basic form of symbols. For example the word "book" refers to an object made of paper on which something might be written. A relation symbol is the verb "to like" which refers to the sympathy of somebody to something or someone.

The criterion of displacement means that not only objects or relations at presence can be described but there are also symbols which refer to objects in another time or place. The word "yesterday" refers to day before and objects mentioned in a sentence with "yesterday" refer to objects from another time than the present one. Displacement is about the communication of events which had happened or will happen and the objects belonging to that event.

Having a range of symbols to communicate these symbols can be newly combined. Creativity is the probable most important feature. Our communication is not restricted to a fixed set of topics or predetermined messages. The combination of a finite set of symbols to an infinite number of sentences and meaning. With the infinite number of sentences the creation of novel messages is possible. How creative the human language is can be illustrated by some simple examples like the process that creates verbs from nouns. New words can be created, which do not exist so far, but we are able to understand them.

Examples:

leave the boat on the beach -> beach the boat

keep the aeroplane on the ground -> ground the aeroplane

write somebody an e-mail -> e-mail somebody

Creative systems are also found in other aspects of language, like the way sounds are combined to form new words. i.e. prab, orgu, zabi could be imagined as names for new products.

To avoid an arbitrary combination of symbols without any regular arrangement "true" languages need structure dependency. Combining symbols the syntax is relevant. A change in the symbol order might have an impact on the meaning of the sentence. For example “The dog bites the cat” has obviously a different meaning than “The cat bites the dog” based on the different word arrangement of the two sentences. [edit] Non-Human Language - Animal Communication [edit] Forms of Communication

As mentioned before human language is just one of quite a number of communication forms. Different forms of communication can be found in the world of animals. From a little moth to a giant whale, all animals appear to have the use of communication.

Not only humans use facial expression for stressing utterances or feeling, facial expressions can be found among apes. The expression, for example "smiling" indicates cooperativeness and friendliness in both the human and the ape world. On the other hand an ape showing teeth indicates the willingness to fight.

Posture is a very common communicative tool among animals. Lowering the front part of the body and extending the front legs is a sign of dogs that they are playful whereas lowering the full body is a dog’s postural way to show its submissiveness. Postural communication is known in both human and non-human primates.

Besides facial expression, gesture and posture that are found in human communication, there are other communicative devices which are either just noticeable by the sub-consciousness of humans like scent or cannot be found amongst humans like light, colour and electricity. The chemicals which are used for a communicative function are called pheremones. Those pheremones are used to mark territorial or to signal its reproductive readiness. For animals scent is a very important tool which predominates their mating behaviour. Humans are influenced in their mating behaviour by scent as well but there are more factors to that behaviour so that scent is not predominating.

The insects use species-dependent light patterns to signal identity, sex and location. For example the octopus changes colour for signalling territorial defence and mating readiness. In the world of birds colour is wide spread, too. The male peacock has colourful feathering to impress female peahens as a part of mating behaviour. These ways of communication help to live in a community and survive in certain environment. [edit] Characteristic Language Features in Animal Communication

As mentioned above it is possible to describe the uniqueness of human language by four criteria (semanticity, displacement, creativity and structural dependency) which are important devices in the human language to form a clear communication between humans. To see if these criteria exist in animal communication - i.e. if animals possess a "true" language - several experiments with non-human primates were performed. Non-human primates were taught American Sign Language (ASL) and a specially developed token language to detect in how far they are capable of linguistic behaviour. Can semanticity, displacement, creativity and structure dependency be found in non-human language?

Experiments

1. In 1931, comparative psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife started an experiment with a chimpanzee, which he raised alongside his own child. The purpose was of course to see how environment influenced development, could chimpanzee be more like human? Eventually the experiment failed, the factors are: the behavior of their son started to become more and more chimpanzee-like and also the tiredness of having to do both experiment and raising two babies at the same time.
2. Human language In 1948, in Orange Park, Florida, Keith and Cathy Hayes tried to teach English words to a chimpanzee named Viki. She was raised as if she were a human child. The chimpanzee was taught to "speak" easy English words like "cup". The experiment failed since with the supralanyngal anatomy and the vocal fold structure that chimpanzees have it is impossible for them to produce human speech sounds. The failure of the Viki experiment made scientists wonder how far are non-human primates able to communicate linguistically.
3. Sign language From 1965 to 1972 the first important evidence showing rudiments of linguistic behaviour was "Washoe", a young female chimpanzee. The experimenters Allen and Beatrice Gardner conducted an experiment where Washoe learned 130 signs of the American Sign Language within three years. Showing pictures of a duck to Washoe and asking WHAT THAT? she combined the symbols of WATER and BIRD to create WATER BIRD as she had not learned the word DUCK (the words in capital letters refer to the signs the apes use to communicate with the experimenter).

It was claimed that Washoe was able to arbitrarily combine signs spontaneously and creatively. Some scientists criticised the ASL experiment of Washoe because they claimed that ASL is a loose communicative system and strict syntactic rules are not required. Because of this criticism different experiments were developed and performed which focus on syntactic rules and structure dependency as well as on creative symbol combination.

A non-human primate named "Kanzi" was trained by Savage-Rumbaugh in 1990. Kanzi was able to deal with 256 geometric symbols and understood complex instructions like GET THE ORANGE THAT IS IN THE COLONY ROOM. The experimenter worked with rewards.

A question which arose was whether these non-human primates were able to deal with human-like linguistic capacities or if they were just trained to perform a certain action to get the reward.

For more detailed explanations of the experiments see The Mind of an Ape.

Can the characteristic language features be found in non-human communication?

Creativity seems to be present in animal communication as amongst others Washoe showed with the creation of WATER BIRD for DUCK. Although some critics claimed that creativity is often accidental or like in the case of Washoe’s WATER BIRD the creation relays on the fact that water and bird were present. Just because of this presence Washoe invented the word WATER BIRD.

In the case of Kanzi a certain form of syntactic rules was observed. In 90% of Kanzi’s sentences there was first the invitation to play and then the type of game which Kanzi wanted to play like CHASE HIDE, TICKLE SLAP and GRAB SLAP. The problem which was observed was that it is not always easy to recognise the order of signs. Often facial expression and hand signs are performed at the same time. One ape signed the sentence I LIKE COKE by hugging itself for “like” and forming the sign for “coke” with its hands at the same time. Noticing an order in this sign sentence was not possible.

A certain structural dependency could be observed at Kanzi’s active and passive sentences. When Matata, a fellow chimpanzee was grabbed Kanzi signed GRAB MATATA and when Matata was performing an action such as biting Kanzi produced MATATA BITE. It has not yet been proved that symbolic behaviour is occurring. Although there are plenty evidences that creativity and displacement occur in animal communication some critics claim that these evidences can be led back to dressage and training. It was claimed that linguistic behaviour cannot be proved as it is more likely to be a training to correctly use linguistic devices. Apes show just to a little degree syntactic behaviour and they are not able to produce sentences containing embedded structures. Some linguists claim that because of such a lack of linguistic features non-human communication cannot be a “true” language. Although we do not know the capacity of an ape's mind it does not seem that the range of meanings observed in ape's wild life approach the capaciousness of semanticity of human communication. Furthermore apes seem not to care to much about displacement as it appears that they do not communicate about imaginary pasts or futures.

All in all non-human primate communication consisting of graded series of communication shows little arbitrariness. The results with non-human primates led to a controversial discussion about linguistic behaviour. Many researchers claimed that the results were influenced by dressage.

For humans language is a communication form suited to the patterns of human life. Other communication systems are better suited for fellow creatures and their mode of existence.

Now that we know that there is a difference between animal communication and human language we will see detailed features of the human language. [edit] Language Comprehension & Production [edit] Language features – Syntax and Semantics

In this chapter the main question will be “how do we understand sentences?”. To find an answer to that problem it is necessary to have a closer look at the structure of languages. The most important properties every human language provides are rules which determine the permissible sentences and a hierarchical structure (phonemes as basic sounds, which constitute words, which in turn constitute phrases, which constitute sentences, which constitute texts). These feature of a language enable humans to create new unique sentences. The fact that all human languages have a common ground even if they developed completely independent from one another may lead to the conclusion that the ability to process language must be innate. Another evidence of a inborn universal grammar is that there were observations of deaf children who were not taught a language and developed their own form of communication which provided the same basic constituents. Two basic abilities human beings have to communicate is to interpret the syntax of a sentence and the knowledge of the meaning of single words, which in combination enables them to understand the semantic of whole sentences. Many experiments have been done to find out how the syntactical and semantical interpretation is done by human beings and how syntax and semantics works together to construct the right meaning of a sentence. Physiological experiments had been done in which for example the event-related potential (ERP) in the brain was measured as well as behavioristic experiments in which mental chronometry, the measurement of the time-course of cognitive processes, was used. Physiological experiments showed that the syntactical and the semantical interpretation of a sentence takes place separately from each other. These results will be presented below in more detail.