Nature and Function of Language

Prepared by: Mohamad Firdaus

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1.0 Introduction
Human language is totally different by purposes as compared to animal communication systems or the human-like languages some have been taught.

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 In his book, Eve Spoke, evolutionist Philip Lieberman admitted: Speech is so essential to our concept of intelligence that its possession is virtually equated with being human. Animals who talk are human, because what sets us apart from other animals is the gift of speech [emphasis in original].
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2.0 Humans language

According to Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar stated that ;
Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words and when words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.

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 In simple, language is a system that consists of rules like grammar and is used in order to convey and express thoughts and feelings. Human language is very unique that none of other species or creatures can learn and make use of human language effectively.

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3.0 Animals communication system

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Birds
Birds have two types of sound signals, calls and songs. Bird calls consist of one or more short notes and seem to be instinctive responses to danger, nesting, flocking and a few other basic situations. Bird calls cannot be varied to produce variations of meaning. Similarly, bird songs have limited use and functions. Although bird songs have variety of melodies and pitch, their internal elements aren't separable into meaningful units and cannot be rearranged to produce new songs which can be understood by other birds.
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Honeybee
The honeybee system of communication consists of dances performed on the wall of the hive. In the 1960's, Karl von Frisch discovered that the Italian honeybee performs three types of dances on the wall of the hive to communicate to other bees the source of nectar. The dances are round dance, sickle dance and tail-wagging dance. Each of these dance have different purposes.

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 But unlike human language, bee communication is limited to a single subject, for instance is the location of nectar with respect to the hive. Bees can only report the location of nectar recently detected but they cannot talk about about a wonderful source of nectar found last week.
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 In an experiment, one bee was tricked by being made to walk in a tube 25 feet to a particularly rich source of nectar and when she returned to the hive, this bee performed the tail-wagging dance, expressing that the honey was hundreds of feet from the hive, which would have been correct if the bee had spent the same amount of time flying to the source instead of walking there.
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Ape
Many people think that primates are at a level of development only a few steps below that of humans. In some parts of Indonesia people believe that apes don't speak because they know that if they did humans would put them to work. As it turns out, ape communication is no closer to human language than the systems of bees and birds because it is a strictly limited and non-creative system of communication.
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4.0 Human-like languages

Human-like language is a language that is taught to animals by human; commonly to chimpanzees.

Evolutionists believe that chimpanzees can learn and use human language effectively. Thus, there are a lot of experiments had been conducted.

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 For example, in an experiment, two linguists from Berkeley, Beatrice and Allen Gartner tried to teach a female chimp Washoe to communicate using coloured blocks. By the age of 6, Washoe had learned 100 signs but couldn't put them together in novel ways or use them in the absence of the given stimulus. In other words, Washoe can only uses each symbol as an index, not as a language.

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5.0 Similarities between human and animal communication

All systems of communication contain signs, units of form with specific meaning (words). Human languages contain sound symbols called words, similar with animal systems that use more varied sound symbols, but each form of the sound conveying definite meaning cannot be changed forever.

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6.0 Differences between animal and human language

1. The signs of animal systems are inborn. Birds, apes and bees naturally and instinctively develop their species' signals, even if raised in captivity and away from adults of their own species. But, humans must acquire language through exposure to a speech community.
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 2. Animal communication systems are set responses to stimuli. Animal communication is here and now is used to express something more or less immediately present in space and time. In other words, the signs of animal communication are used as indexes.
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 3. In animal systems, each signal has one and only one function. More than one sign cannot share the same meaning.

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 4. Animal signals are not naturally used in different ways. Animal systems are essentially noncreative. They cannot be used metaphorically or figuratively. As far as we know, animals can't lie or invent myths.

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 5. Animals are non-creative creatures thus, their communication systems are just a closed inventories of signs used to express a few specific messages only. Honeybees, for instance, can communicate only about the location of a source of nectar. As far as we know, bees do not communicate about the weather or the beauty of nature, or gossip about other bees in the hive.
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7.0 Conclusion
Human language is very changeable. Human language often changes quickly from generation to generation. Unlike animals communication system which only has fixed signs for limited purposes of communication only.

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 In a nutshell, it is proven that human language is totally different by purposes as compared to animal communication systems or the human-like languages some have been taught. In fact, animals clearly do not have creative communication which could be called true language.
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 Thank you~

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