Animal communication & human language have many underlying differences in their structure, form & functions, among the reasons for these are, physiological differences, humans larger brain size & greater neural complexity & therefore greater processing capacity, need or desire to communicate varied types of information in a complete but straightforward & rapid manner, this possibly being related to survival mechanisms, as being able to communicate important information rapidly amongst a group could improve the possibility of avoiding danger, & lead to an increased chance of survival, (Atran, 1990).
These differences can be said to support the claim that human language is unique, (Lieberman, 1994).
Physical & neurological differences between animals & humans both have a large part to play in the reasons why humans have language & animals do not.
Animals, as well as humans, have the neural plasticity that makes learning possible, but humans appear to have greater learning capacities that are not found among mammals. Language also utilises the facility to perform learned motor actions rapidly & automatically, these motor actions are possible, in part, because of the human ability to make very fine movements of the tongue & lips, this, combined with the movements of the larynx, makes words, which are part of phrases, sentences, etc. Animals lack this ability of combining complex motor skills with mental constructions into intelligible sounds that convey meaning. Mental construction is seen as a general ability that is common to those with higher intellectual functions & controlled by interrelated parts of the brain, & although there is evidence that the great apes possess some cognitive & motor facilities that are similar to humans there is evidence for humans developing & improving their mental constructional skills from 1.5 million years ago in a way that the great apes didn’t.
Although many animals do have a quite varied collection of sounds used for communication they lack grammar. It is argued by some that grammar came about through Darwinian natural selection, (Pinker & Bloom, 1990) but another explanation presented is that grammar was a consequence of other developments like increased brain size, (Chomsky, 1968). This increase in brain size has given humans abilities that are far beyond those of animals, & have enabled the development of the complex brain structures necessary for language to evolve. Even the largest primates have a much smaller brain size than humans & although they do have quite complex social organisation & communication systems they simply don’t have the processing power needed for language to develop.
There have been many attempts to teach animals language, & although there seems to have been some success none of the animals have displayed the creativity & originality that would support the view that they have ‘acquired’ language, (Harley, 1995). Some primates, such as orang-utans, gorillas, & chimps have managed to be taught language like symbols, although none vocally, but in those ape language experiments that have had better results the main requisite was for the apes to point to visual symbols, (Gibson & Ingold, 1993).
The physical differences between animals & humans are important when trying to discover reasons why humans have developed language & animals have not. Animals have comparatively much larger & less flexible tongues than humans, we know from evolutionary biology that the bunch of nerve fibres running along the hypoglossal canal from the brain to the tongue is more than double the size in humans than in primates, this explains the very great flexibility of our tongues, also our teeth are upright, & the voice box is much lower in the throat, & the muscles & fine motor control of our lips is more developed.
There is also the anthropological theory that language developed as a verbal code to express important information to the ‘in-group’ & that originally this information would have been transmitted by detailed displays, including ‘sounds’ and that its evolving into language was a way of speeding up the flow as well as excluding those who were not part of the group, (Knight, 1998). Being able to rapidly communicate detailed information could have given an advantage to those using this code, leading to a better chance of survival. Another part of Knights theory holds that whereas primates don’t collectively deceive, humans do, as part of setting up group identity, therefore primate resistance to deception impedes the emergence of the features of speech. Pretend play is vital to the development of the cognitive skills necessary for distinguishing surface from deeper meaning, the concept of co-operative pretend play is essential to the current understanding of how children acquire speech. Although animals do use social displays as a form of communication, these lack the complexity of human social displays, & although chimps play, there is no collective sharing of what is imagined & they do not indulge in pretend-play, maybe because their understanding of the world is limited to only what is relevant to them, unlike humans they lack the facility of creativity & abstraction. Possibly human displays became so time consuming that the development of a ‘code’ to convey information evolved out of necessity as human awareness extended to encompass greater, more complex ideas. This greater awareness & comprehension of complex concepts also becoming possible through the larger brain size & higher processing ability that was also evolving.
References.
Atran, S. (1990) Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
Chomsky, N. (1968). Language & Mind. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Gibson, K. R. & Ingold, T. (1993). Tools, Language & Cognition in Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harley, T. A. (1995). The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. Sussex: Psychology Press.
Knight, C. (1998). Ritual/Speech Co evolution: a solution to the problem of deception. Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social & Cognitive Bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lieberman, P. H. (1994). Human language & human uniqueness. Language & Communication, 14, 87-95.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language & Mind. London: Penguin.
Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language & natural selection. Behavioural & Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.
