Chapter 3 LANGUAGE AND HUMANS

"Language and culture are the frameworks through which humans experience, communicate, and
understand reality." -Lev Vygotsky

Lesson 1 Non-Human Comunication

Fun Facts:

 Deathwatch beetle taps its head against the wood to signal each other.
 Red squirrels warn intruders by making a series of loud rattles and screeches.
 Each bottlenose dolphin has a unique whistling sound that can be used to identify itself.
 Peacocks maneuver their tails during courting rituals.
 Male whales communicate with the females using songs. Wolves call other wolves by howling.

Acquisition

Animals communicate differently to others by the use of their body parts or by making sounds. Their
manner of communication affects the behavior of the receiver and the sender of the information or
message.

Types of Animal Communication

 Auditory communication involving sound

 Visual communication involving gesture, posture, etc.
 Tactile communication involving touch
 Chemical communication involving pheromone

Above all the animal researches conducted, the ones on apes are the most extensively done.

The Lana Project

A female chimpanzee, named Lana was trained to manipulate a keyboard. The research was done in the
1970s and the aim was to train her on the language system, which is computer- based. The team
introduced her to a lexigram and she was able to distinguish many terms and symbols.

The Washoe Project

The University of Nevada in Reno spearheaded the Washoe project experimenting with chimpanzees on
communication. After years of experimentations, they concluded that chimps did not possess the
physical ability to form a spoken language; thus they adhered to body gestures instead. They decided to
teach Washoe ASL or American Sign Language, the same taught to humans with hearing and speaking
impairments.
The Koko Project

The project started with a year old gorilla, Koko. She was taught sign language, the same as Washoe,
however; Koko was also taught vocal sounds. She was an amazing gorilla with near human capability.
Her progress was so fast that every month she would learn a new set of signs and in the span of four
years of the project, the researchers recorded at total of 200 signs. Her ability is amazing; in fact, when
she was tested for comprehension, Koko's score was high enough to conclude that there is a high
chance for a smooth communication traffic between humans and gorillas.

Lesson 2 Features of Human Language by Hockett

1. Vocal-auditory channel - Human language occurs as a vocal type of communication, which is

perceived by hearing. The basic mode of communication by the vast majority makes use of sounds,
secondary to which is writing. An exception are the people who use sign language in communication
which makes use of the manual-visual channel.

2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception - This means that just like when a person stands in
the middle of a room, he can be heard by everyone, assuming that he is speaking loudly enough. Human
language signals when sent can be perceived in limited directions though sent in all directions.

3. Rapid fading (transitoriness) - Speech waveforms fade rapidly which is why the human language
signal does not persist over time. It is impossible to say "how are you?" and have someone hear it hours
later. It may be possible when audio recorded or video recording or writing the message is done.

4. Interchangeability - This means that the speaker can receive and send the same language signal.

5. Total feedback - Unlike traffic signs, which cannot monitor its function, we can hear ourselves while
we speak.

6. Specialization - Humans have lips, tongue, throat, etc. and each organ has its own specific function in
speech.

7. Semanticity - This means that for every signal there is a corresponding meaning.

8. Arbitrariness - Sometimes we ask, why we assign "bird" to refer to the small flying animals. Human
language is arbitrary, meaning, there is no necessary connection to the form and the thing assigned to.

9. Discreteness - The basic speech units can be categorized. There is no gradual continuous shading from
one sound to another in the linguistics system, although there may be a continuum in the real physical
world.

10. Displacement - Sometimes we speak about things in the past or future, and our language allows us
to do so. We can even talk about distant things, like the planets and things which do not exist, like Jack
Frost or the Tooth Fairy.

11. Productivity - We can create never-before-heard utterances. For example "The lady who lived in my
closet told me that Mer who is from Jupite will come and celebrate the birth of the emperor of the Earth
and free al prisoners in jail."
12. Traditional Transmission - Learning language requires effort because human language is not inborn

13. The duality of patterning - This means that the discrete parts of a can be combined in a systematic
way to create new forms. It is the ability to recombine small units in different orders.

Lesson 3 Halliday’s Language Functions