Animal Communcication

Thesis

One would believe that animals have a way of communicating based on sound. When in reality these sounds are the lack of language because of displacement, arbitrariness and productivity.

Quotes
“when your dog says Grrr, it means Grrr, right now,because dogs don't seem capable of communicating Grrr,last night, over in the park. In contrast, human language users are normally capable of producing messages equivalent to Grr, last night, over in the park, and then going to say In fact, I'll be going back tomorrow for some more."(pg.9)

- This quote describes what displacement is all about. Displacement is the property of human language to refer to the past and future time. For example in this quote even though a dog says Grr, he is not describing I want to go to the park today or tomorrow because they are not capable if accomplishing such a task.

"For the majority if animal signals, there does not appear to be a clear connection between the conveyed message and the signal used to convey it. This impression we have of the non-arbitrariness of the animal signaling may be closely connected to the fact that, for any animal, the set of signals used in communication is finite. That is, each variety of animal communication consists of a fixed and limited set of vocal or gesture forms."(pg.10)

-This quote describes what arbitrariness is in relation to animal communication. It declares that even though just like human language their sounds do not directly correlate with what they sound like. They are not communicating through language because they are limited in their vocal capability.

“Productivity (or creativity or openendness) and it is linked to the fact that the potential number if utterances in my human language is infinite. The communications systems of other creatures do not appear to have this type of flexibility. Cicadas have four signals to choose from and vervet monkeys have thirty-six vocal calls."