How and to what extent does language make humans distinctive from other animals?

Most living creatures communicate in some way. Birds and whales sing, monkeys and chimpanzees chatter, dolphins firedog and squeak, til now bees perform their elaborate waggle dance. Language however, involves put take on sounds in the correct grammatical revise to convey a message. Sternberg (1995, p.345) defines forgiving actors line as, ...an set up means of combining talking to in order to communicate. Clearly, compassionate speech communication is much, much more(prenominal) than arranging particular sounds. It is an exit for our thoughts and desires, it allows us to convey our feelings, our hopes and dreams, we ass even use lecture to deceive new(prenominal)s or regularize jokes. In fact, it is this complexity of kind-hearted language that prompts researcher Sternberg to repugn that language is solely a human ability. He comments, Parrots may read certain haggle only when they are non really using language . What they say is not organised and doe s not involve combining terminology to pass a message to others. (Sternberg, 1995, p.345) So can it be assumed then that animals do not possess this persona? Research conducted by Savage-Rumbaugh (1986) with pygmy chimpanzee monkeys may counsel otherwise and behaviourists such as skinner (1957) would argue that language is learnt as a process of re-inforcement and therefore, as a result, there is nothing special about language and thus no reason why language should not be learnt by other species. (Eysenck, 2000, p.

245) Nativist Chomsky, believing language to be an ignorant human ability, disagrees. If an ani mal had a power as biologically advantageou! s as language but somehow hadnt apply it until now, it would be an evolutionary miracle, like decision an island of earth who could be taught to fly. (Chomsky, 1993, p.249) To appreciate how this unique quality makes humans distinctive from other animals it would be prudent to consider the criteria that categorises human language. If you want to incur a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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