The Animal Language Part 3

Another feature, which is regarded a property strictly limited to human language is productivity. This indicates the ability to produce and understand novel utterances. Majority of animals appear to have fixed number of signals for example North American cicada has 4 and vervet monkey 36 and cannot produce anything new. But once again, there are some exceptions like the expression 'water-bird' created by Washoe after seeing a swan. This, however can be argued as at the time this utterance was produced, Washoe was near a river and at the same time she could see a swan so it is not clear whether she was not referring to two different things 'river' and 'swan' rather than just one 'swan'.

Last property considered by Hockett a defining feature of a language is prevarication. This is an ability to make a statement knowing it is false. This aspect of language seems to be very limited in animal world as according to Hockett 'lying seems extremely rare among animals' although there is a certain evidence of this property being present in the animal communication system as shown in Matata's behaviour in interaction with another female chimpanzee.

In conclusion, it is possible to say that critical evaluation of Hockett's design features suggests that animals may have not as much of a language as just a communication system within their species.

Nearly each of the Hockett's design features can be found in communication systems of certain species but it never is all of them that are present in just one communication system. This applies fully to all animal communication systems although it is worth mentioning that particular species such as apes are proved to do considerably better in regards to enclosure of design features in their speech. This however, is aided by assistance of research conductors and does not happen naturally.

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