DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMAN LANGUAGE AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

Language is an invaluable possession of the mankind. It becomes the medium

that differentiate the human race from other species for the capability of using language.
According to New Oxford English-English-Malay Dictionaries, language refers to the system
of communication that a society in a particular place uses in writing and speaking. It also
refers to the system of sound and writing that human beings use to express their ideas, what
they think and feel. Human language brings the meaning of the system of communication
that can only be done by human race through writing and speech in order to express ideas,
thoughts and feelings. Language has many organized form that exist around the world such
as English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean language. Animals do speak to each other.
Animal like dolphin, tiger, ostrich and ox communicate to each other, instead of using
language like the human beings do; they use their particular communication only for their
particular species. It means that they cannot use their communication to the other species.
Their language is not organized as the human language. Animal communication has been
transferred genetically and not through learning system of language as human race does. It
shows that human language is different from the animal communication. In the study of
linguistic, human language has certain properties that make it unique and different from
animal communication system and these properties include duality, creativity, displacement
and arbitrariness.
In human language, people learn how to speak properly through the study of
language. Starting from the kindergarten, we were introduced and exposed to the learning of
alphabets and how to say the alphabets in the right way. It is known as the study of
phonemes. As we know, phoneme is the smallest unit of sound which is significant in a
language. All language in the world stresses the importance of phoneme to its native speaker
so that it can stand the originality of language and it will not be vanished from the world or
assimilated to the other language. The phoneme is very essential in making words because it
can make a word different from another word. For example the b and the d in big and
dig. And when we get older, we learn the process of making syllable through the
combination of the alphabets. Many syllables can be formed even only using two different
alphabets. In other words, these phonemes combine to make a new structure called
morphemes that will produce a new word.


Number of morpheme/s Word
One Desire
Two (Desirable) Desire + able
There (Desirability) Desire + able +ity

The study and process that have been mentioned shows the duality of structure of
human language. Yet for animal communication, as they did not learn and use phonemes
and morphemes to communicate, they inherited the sounds, signal and movement from their
parents. This process did not involve the learning of simple to complex learning as the
human language. The youngster of the animal only inherits the sound, signal and movement
from their parents through observation only and some of the features had been inherited
genetically. Thus in human language, it has two level of patterning which is not available in
animal communication. Hence duality of structure of human language is one of the main
properties that differentiate human language from animal communication.
Creativity is another recognizable feature of human language. Every second in this
world, people are making and producing new sentences that never spoken nor heard before.
Victoria F. et al (1998) stated that all person who know a language, can and do create new
sentences when you speak and understand new sentences created by other. The ability to
think creatively is not only bound and limited to stimulus-response behaviour, but it also
includes the emotion of the person involve.
The creativity of human in making new sentences is known as open-ended language
whereby human can arrange and rearrange phonemes, morphemes, words and phrases that
allows human to form new modes of expressions. If someone hit us on our shoulder, we will
make a scream or grunt. After that we may say Why are you hitting me? or You are such a
clumsy boy who always bring hurt to others and I know you will never change or any
sentences whether it is shorter or longer because we are not controlled by the stimulus in
producing new sentences. This also allows human to construct unlimited number of
messages. The creativity ability also makes us know how to construct appropriate sentences
in various situations. For example, when we hit someone accidentally, we may seek for
apologize such as Sorry sir, I really did not see you there or I am really sorry, it is my
mistake.


In animal communication, the creativity of the animal communicate to each other is
present but it is only bound by the stimulus. Animal only use speech sounds and gestures to
express something. This situation is known as the closed inventory of sign. They can only
send a set of number of different messages to each other. They also cannot produce new
vocal signal to communicate For example, round, sickle and tail-wagging dance are
performed by the Italian honeybee to indicate the distance of nectar from the hive.
Birds usually make call as the response for some basic situations such as danger,
nesting and even before, during and after making a flight. Male birds produce songs to attract
mates or marking their territory. Even talking birds such as parrots have the ability to
reproduce words and phrases of human language that have been heard, they do not
understand what is actually the meaning of those words and phrases. For example, when a
parrot says Koki want a banana, he may want to eat an apple or maybe he wants nothing at
all. He may say hello or goodbye for the person who pass through him. Through the
second point, it can be concluded that the creativity of human language is not only based on
the stimulus but also can be produce through the production of many sentences while animal
communication is controlled by the stimulus of the animal.
Another quality that makes human language is different from animal communication is
displacement, or the ability to refer the things that are not in the here and now. This feature
also allows human race to talk about some things such as places and objects that are real or
not directly in front of them. In a certain situation, by using displacement, we can tell
something whether it is absent, a myth or even lies. We may tell our friend that today is going
to rain or we could tell our teachers about our activities during the last holiday or even about
Santa Claus at the North Pole. We can also talk about something that is far from us such as
the moon or other countries.
This shows that human is capable to communicate about events at times and places
other than those of their occurrence. This ability to use displacement in language is known as
context free. It means that we can make a speech about things that are already happened,
will happen or never happen and whether the things are at our side, far from us, things we
never see or even never exist.
Sentence Explanation
I hope to meet Santa Claus for this
upcoming Christmas
1. Santa Claus (thing that is never exist)
2. Upcoming Christmas (thing in future)
Yesterday I went to the moon.
1. The moon (thing that is far from us)
2. Yesterday (thing that is already happened)

In contrast, for the animal communication, there is no displacement feature in their
communication because they can only communicate about something with the context of
here and now. This is known as context bound. It means that they communicate to express
something more or less immediately present in space and time. They cannot talk about
yesterday, tomorrow, or even what will be happen four minutes later or what will not be.
Animal also cannot talk about the specific location of a place.
Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions for the displacement in animal
communication. For instance, honeybees use wiggle dance to communicate the distance of
nectar from the hive. Even so, it still has the lack of displacement whereby honeybee can
only communicate about the location of the most recent food source it has visited. It means it
cannot communicate about the location of a food in the past or even in the future. In the
other word, displacement is another quality that makes human language is different from
animal communication as most animal communication lacks displacement.
Arbitrariness also gives a huge dissimilarity between human language and animal
communication. Because of the arbitrariness, human languages differ from another place to
other places. This is because human language is influenced by the geography which
involves the culture, social and natural environment. That is to say if people live in different
places, they will speak different language. For example, people in Malaysia speak many
different languages according to their places such as Tamil, Chinese, Malay, Iban and Bugis
language. People from different country also speak different language. The linguistic signs of
the same object may differ from one region to another.
Word Language
Love (English)
Cinta (Malay)
Ask (Turkish)
Amor (Spanish)
Kjaerlighet (Norwegian)
Gra (Irish)
Pag-ibig (Filipino)

However, there are countries that have similar language to the other country such as
Malay language is spoken by Malaysians, Singaporeans and Indonesians. English language
is spoken widely in Australians, Americans and Indians. Even so, these languages still have
differences between the places such as the intonation, stress, rhythm and pronunciation.

Different from human language, the animals of the same species have the same
system and symbols while communicating. It means that the way they produce sounds and
make symbols are still the same across the world. To explain this situation, we can see that
when a dog bares its teeth to indicate it is ready to attack. This action is also done by the
other dogs from different geographical region. We cannot justify that a dog will make roar
because the action is only can be done by the lion. It means that the dog all over the world
can only make the same sound. This property of human language has made it more
dissimilar from animal communication.
In essence, the aspects of connected speech truly have a huge different of properties
that make English language unique and eccentric. Even though human language and animal
communication communicate through symbols and signs, human language is more advance
because we also use language that is never being done by other species other than human
race. Human language is more organized with the usage of alphabets to write down new
ideas for the next generations. Unlike the animal communication, it is context bound, which
means they cannot communicate with each other in order to express things that have already
happened. Overall, the human language becomes the sole property of mankind that
differentiates us from any species in this world.