Communication

The sounds from our surroundings give us information about what’s happening around us. Even more information is communicated to us through the sounds of speech. This uniquely human form of communication, speech, is a complex combination of vocally generated sounds that transmit ideas from one person to another. Speech is a true telepathy, by which an image never seen by one person can be received from another. Through the vocal communication of ideas, an individual can become aware of observations from another individual’s perspective, information beyond what one’s own sensations provide. Speech is so versatile that it can transmit from one person to another an idea that the recipient would never have without the communication, such as the idea of a blue and pink polka-dot banana.

Many animals use sound as a means of communication. Dogs bark, cattle low, birds sing. Each of these animals produces sounds in order to communicate with other members of their species and, inadvertently at times, with other species, too. They vocalize for a variety of purposes: to establish territory, to alert and warn of danger, to attract a mate, etc. For each species of animal, there is a particular sound associated with a particular message. For example, the American robin uses particular sounds to signal specific situations. The male robin uses one call to signal its territory and to attract a mate.

Both males and females use a different call to alert other robins to be attentive to a possible danger, perhaps a human walking by.

They both will also use yet another call to signal an identified danger, such as a cat or a hawk.

Although these vocalizations are directed toward other robins to communicate with them, we humans can learn to recognize and understand these calls, too.

Language

Human language is far more complex than any forms of communication used by non-human animals. Communication systems used by other animals such birds, or cattle, or dogs, are closed systems. This means that they consist of a limited number of possible things that can be expressed and a fixed set of sounds to express them. Birds produce specific vocal sounds to signal specific information, such as territorial boundaries, the readiness to mate, or the presence of a predator. The languages of birds do not allow them to communicate ideas beyond a simple set, and the sounds used to communicate these ideas are mostly genetically determined. Human language, on the other hand, is open-ended and productive, meaning that human language allows humans to produce an unlimited set of expressions from a finite set of elements. The set of elements is the range of vocal sounds that humans can produce, which is large but still limited. However, humans can combine these sounds to form units (words and sentences) of unlimited meaning. How sounds are combined to express specific ideas in a human language are codified in the grammatical rules of the language. The grammatical rules of any particular human language are largely arbitrary and not determined by genetics. This means that a language can only be acquired through social interaction.

Several species of animals have proven able to acquire forms of communication through social learning. For example, the bonobo Kanzi learned to express itself using a set of pictographs. Similarly, many species of birds and whales learn their songs by imitating other members of their species. However, while some animals may acquire large numbers of vocal symbols, none has been able to learn as many different signs as is generally known by an average 4-year-old human, nor have any acquired anything resembling the complex grammar of human language.

Human languages also differ from animal communications in that human languages comprise categories of utterances, such as noun and verb, or present and past, that allow them to express exceedingly complex meanings. Human language is also unique in having the property of recursivity. For example, a noun can be constructed by embedding another noun within it, such as {the {baby’s} toy}. Similarly a sentence can be formed by embedding another sentence within it, such as {I see {the bird is flying}.}. Human language is also the only known natural communication system that can be used to communicate through different senses. Human language can express ideas when spoken and perceived through hearing, or written and perceived through vision, or made tactile, as in the braille system, and perceived through touch. Human language is also unique in being able to refer to events that took place in the past or may take place in the future, and to imagined or hypothetical events. It can also describe situations and events that are taking place in locations other than where the communication occurs. Although some animals can communicate information about distant locations, such as how bees communicate the location of sources of nectar that are out of sight, the degree to which this occurs in human language is unparalleled.