Rachel Fletcher (Q's about Language)

(My 250-500 word summary on questions about language)

Is it only Humans that have Language?                                                                             Rachel Fletcher.

Do Animals Communicate? How/which ones?

How Does Human/Animal Language Differ?

Language is exclusively human. Language is natural to us. Animals use sound to communicate, we can talk to communicate.  The human larynx is lower in our throat which gives us the ability to form more complex sounds. This helps us talk, unlike our animal counterparts whose larynx is much higher and therefore makes it extremely difficult for them to produce complex sounds, like our words. Animals not being able to talk isn’t just down to the fact of their different larynx to us scientists have also found a gene that we have that animals don’t. This gene named FOXP2 is what produces the small muscle movements in our mouth that allows us to talk and may be the reason why animals don’t talk.            

Animals cannot talk. Language is exclusively ours. But animals still have a way to communicate. How else would animals show attraction, aggression, submission to another of its species?  How else could they warn off predators, of predators? When they want to make known the availability of food, suitability of an environment, what are they do to communicate these things.

Animals have ways of communicating that we don’t. Just because they can’t talk doesn’t mean they don’t communicate. They have other special ways to communicate. Eels are known to use pulsating fields to communicate. Elephants use low frequency sounds to communicate with each other, which can be heard up to sixteen kilometres away. Dolphins and whales will sing to communicate. Meanwhile bees rely on their queen to release pheromones into the hive to communicate to them that all is well, that they still have a queen. When these pheromones are not released the bees will larvae, royal jelly that then transforms ordinary larvae into a new queen.

‘Animal communication is the transmission of a signal from one animal to another such that the sender benefits, on average, from the response of the recipient.’-Slater 1983

(Resources Used)

-http://clas.mq.edu.au/animal_communication/index.html

-http://fachrull-educator.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/how-human-language-differs-from-animal.html

-http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test1materials/Animalchart.htm

-Why Do We Talk? Documentary SBS

-Love the Lingo VCE Units 1 & 2 English Language. K. Burridge, D. De. Laps