Using language

Important lessons have been learned from attempts to teach chimpanzees how to use forms of language. We have answered some questions. Were Washoe and Kanzi capable of taking part in interaction with humans by using a symbol system chosen by humans and not chimpanzees? The answer is clearly “Yes.” Did Washoe and Kanzi go on to perform linguistically on a level comparable to a human child about to begin pre-school? The answer is just as clearly “No.” In arriving at these answers, we have also had to face the fact that, even with our list of key properties, we still don’t seem to have a non-controversial definition of what counts as “using language.”

One solution might be to stop thinking of language, at least in the phrase “using language,” as a single thing that one can either have or not have. We could then say that there are (at least) two ways of thinking about what “using language” means. In a very broad sense, language does serve as a type of communication system that can be observed in a variety of different situations. In one situation, we look at the behavior of a two-year-old human child interacting with a caregiver as an example of “using language” in the broad sense. In another situation, we observe very similar behavior from chimpanzees and bonobos when they are interacting with humans they know. It has to be fair to say that, in both cases, we observe the participants “using language.” However, there is a difference. Underlying the two-year-old’s communicative activity is the capacity to develop a highly complex system of sounds and structures, plus a set of computational procedures, that will allow the child to produce extended discourse containing a potentially infinite number of novel utterances. No other creature has been observed “using language” in this sense. It is in this more fundamental or abstract sense that we say that language is uniquely human. In the following chapters, we will begin to look in detail at the many elements that make up this uniquely human phenomenon.

مواضيع ذات صلة

Word by word

Finale—Master Class Introduction

Finale—Master Class

Sign language

Artificial spoken languages

Artificial Languages

Predictions

The success story

Obstacles to keeping 6,000 languages alive

Language revival movements

Language Death—Prognosis

What happens to a language when it is dying?