Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Language and mind rethought
- 2 Is human language unrelated to animal communication systems?
- 3 Are there language universals?
- 4 Is language innate?
- 5 Is language a distinct module in the mind?
- 6 Is there a universal Mentalese?
- 7 Is thought independent of language?
- 8 Language and mind regained
- Notes
- References
- Index
2 - Is human language unrelated to animal communication systems?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Language and mind rethought
- 2 Is human language unrelated to animal communication systems?
- 3 Are there language universals?
- 4 Is language innate?
- 5 Is language a distinct module in the mind?
- 6 Is there a universal Mentalese?
- 7 Is thought independent of language?
- 8 Language and mind regained
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Myth: Language is the preserve of humans, and humans alone; it cannot be compared to anything found amongst non-humans, and is unrelated to any non-human communicative capability.
Until relatively recently, it had been widely assumed that human language was unique: while some animals may have rudimentary forms of communication, these are limited, and relatively uninteresting. Moreover, so the myth goes, human language is unrelated to animal forms of communication. Even if it did derive from an evolutionarily earlier form of human proto-language, this bore no relation to the communication systems found, today, amongst other primates, mammals and countless other types of species in the animal kingdom. But the accumulation of research on the way other species communicate, from apes to whales, from vervets to starlings, increasingly suggests this may overstate the divide between human language and non-human communicative systems. Many of the characteristics exhibited by language are found, to varying degrees, across a broad spectrum of animal communication systems.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Language MythWhy Language Is Not an Instinct, pp. 27 - 63Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014