YOU'RE SUCH A GOOD BOY!

Over the last couple of months, my friends and I have gotten into a serious argument over whether animals have language or not. I believe that they don't, and I would say that most linguists would agree with me. However, to all the animal lovers out there (not to say I am not one of them), my belief is entirely outrageous, and, as a result, I get regularly sent Tik Tok videos of dogs "speaking."

As I hinted at before, and like all things in linguistics, there is really no unanimous consensus about this matter. It comes down to how you define language linguistically. However, the argument for why animals don't have language seems more convincing than the other way around. Hopefully, I will be able to convince you that your loyal companion can, in fact, not understand what you are saying.

In 1967, the father of modern linguistics, Noam Chompsky, proposed the Innateness hypothesis. He said, "Human language is unique because it is a symbolic communication system that is learned and not inherited biologically." His hypothesis can easily be proved with babies. If a baby was born in India to parents of Indian heritage but then adopted at a very young age and brought back to the United States, the baby would speak English. This makes sense because the baby learns from their surroundings and doesn't inherit language based on their ethnicity. This doesn't hold true for animals. For the majority of animal species, their communication system is inherited biologically. For example, a dog isolated with ducks from the beginning of the dog's life, wouldn't be able to communicate with the ducks.

Okay, you're probably thinking that's great, but what exactly is language. The linguistic definition of language is arbitrary, and there is no one definition. This is part of the reason why no one can agree if animals have language or not. However, over the last couple of years, I have come to understand that language is made up of grammar (i.e., a computational system in your brain), is exclusively human, always changing, and is a mechanism that turns a mental conception into an external physical signal (n.b when linguists talk about the definition of language, they aren't talking about the colloquial definition). I also believe that human language has four essential characteristics: reflexivity, displacement, duality, and arbitrariness. I will explain each aspect below and make my argument based on each one. It is important to note that some animals possess some of the four characteristics listed above. However, no animal except for humans has all four of these characteristics.

Productivity:

Productivity is the ability to create new expressions (i.e., words, phrases) to describe new objects or situations. The addition of the word iPhone into the English lexicon is a prime example of productivity. Before 2007, the word iPhone didn't exist, but now it is a frequently used word that was quickly integrated into our everyday vocabulary. We can also reappropriate-change the meaning- words like queer and savage. Furthermore, humans can create an infinite number of sentences. However, animals have fixed references and, therefore, don't have productivity. Essentially, each signal in the animals' communication system is associated with one event or object and can never change.

Displacement

Displacement is the ability to communicate in the past, present, and future. As humans, we all have the ability to speak in all three tenses. On the other hand, animals can only speak in the present (i.e., the now). They can't communicate about the dog park they went to yesterday or how they will steal their owner's lunch tomorrow. The only known exception to this is bees. Bees can communicate in the past via a dance to tell their hive mates where they last found flowers.

Reflexivity

Reflexivity is exactly what it sounds like! It is the ability to reflect on language and use language to think and talk about language. So next time you're analyzing Shakespeare's metaphor or discussing Margaret Atwood's symbolism, you're using reflexivity!

Arbitrariness:

There is no natural connection between the orthography of a word and its meaning. For example, the orthography for "cat" in Korean is widely different from the orthography of "cat" in English, but they both point to the same object. Therefore, the way the word actually looks on paper has no connection to what it looks like in real life. In most animal communication, there seems to be a clear connection between the message and the signal used to convey the message.

Duality

Take the sentence "Dogs play ball," and break the sentence up into the words "dogs," "play," and "ball." Now take the word "dogs" and break it up into the letters "d," "o," "g," and "s." Your ability to break down the initial sentence into words and then letters/meaningless units is duality. While you probably never sit around breaking down sentences, the fact that you can do it is unique. Animals don't have duality. They can't separate the sounds they make into smaller subunits. Furthermore, they don't understand that language is organized into three different sublevels.

But that doesn't explain why your dog sits when you tell him/her to sit. In my opinion, they are responding to sound stimuli. You usually speak to your fuzzy friend using a higher-pitched voice, which tells them that you are calling them or speaking to them. But most importantly, they typically get a treat or some sort of reward for sitting. Therefore, they don't really understand what you are saying, but they are simply associating the reward with the act of sitting. You can test this out by saying a random word and holding a treat. I suspect that your fuzzy friend will sit regardless of what you say.