Malaprop McGrumpypants

I’ve noticed that I do pretty decently on my assignments, if I explain to the people of tumblr (who probably don’t read this) what it is exactly that I’m working on. In a smart-ass dumbed-down sort of language. :D  Today’s topic is:

Language in Animals: Does it exist?

Answer: NOPE

Sorry.  Don’t get butt-hurt about it, it’s not my fault. It’s fact.  If you’re gonna say, “Well, they communicate!” I will say “DUH.”  The fact of the matter is that if by language, you mean the complex thing I’m doing right now, then no.  NOPE. NEIN. Don’t get me wrong, animals can have excellent cognitive abilities, but language is human specific.

WHY? Okay, here are the reasons why Language is Human specific:

-Recursion: Language can theoretically go on forever.  It’s the reason why no one is ever like: I came up with the longest sentence in the world: “The girl went to the grocery store that sold my mom, who was 30 at the time, some blue milk that was spoiled.” All some troll has to do is say, “The pretty girl that went to the grocery store that sold my mom, who was 30 at the time, some blue milk that was spoiled, is very pale.” We can just keep tacking shit on until our brain explodes.  There are no real signs of this in animal communication.  Birdsong can repeat things, but the meaning never changes.  It always means, “Hey babay, how do you like your eggs in the morning?”

-Semantics: Other animals have some sort of sentence sense (syntax) and sounds (phonology).  But it doesn’t carry much meaning.  (See the above with reference to birdsong.) Which leads to:

-displacement: Animals don’t discuss things that aren’t present.  You don’t see monkeys telling stories from long ago, or discussing how their language works. Unless chimps are really good at faking us out >.> In fact, our curiosity about language is something animals definitely don’t share with us.

-Learning: So it turns out Birds need to learn birdsong, just like children need to learn language.  But if you take a bird and give it to another type of bird, the baby wont learn the songs of the other bird.  However, you can take an Asian baby and put her in Africa, and she’ll learn the language.  Like a boss.  Also, you can’t just stick a chimp in the environment and expect it to learn language like a baby.  Even if it is sign language (because apes lack the vocal tract to produce language), the chimps only learn about 200 signs.  All of them have to do with food and attention.  They don’t sign for anything else. 

-Distinguishing between the language and other crap: Kids don’t grow up speaking lawnmower.  They know the difference between language and all the other noises they hear.  Lyrebirds and Mockingbirds on the other hand, don’t.  That’s because the females like it when the males of these species have all sorts of noises. 

There are some things that animal communication have in common with Human language, but it still lacks in all of the crazy complicated things that makes language so unique to us.  The professor for this class once said that the view of language being personal and unique to every individual (and that there exists no community language) makes it seem very lonely.  And as Humans, we take pride in knowing how awesome and smart we are. But in the end, we kind of want something to be like us, whether it is Aliens or our pets, because we are kind of a lonely species.  It’s hard out there for a Homo…sapien