Human and Animal Language

• both animals and humans use signals (sounds and gestures) to communicate
• animals communicate with:
  • odor - mice
  • complex gestures - bees’ waggle-dance video
  • songs - used by birds and whales
  • lexigram - a symbol representing a word/lexeme - used by chimpanzees and baboons
• human language is unique because it is:
  • recursive - used to describe a language with units (such as sentences or phrases) that can contain themselves (such as sentences within sentences or phrases within phrases).
  • generative - used to describe a language that can convey an infinite number of ideas based on different combinations of words or symbols.
  • displacement - the ability of a language to describe things that are not present

Subpages

• Brain Communication Study - Human vs Monkeys