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Introduction
We are going to talk about human language and animal
communication and mention the similarities and differences between
them and then show how human language is uniquely powerful and
different from animal communication. We will explore the amazing
features that human language possesses and see whither animal
communication system shares all these features or not. This can be
done by closely discussing some language definitions and studying
the main characteristics of human language and then trying to
compare them with those of animals.

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Language definitions:
"What is language?‟ is similar to what „‟life‟ is. Everyone knows
the answer ,but cannot present a comprehensive definition. The term
„language‟ like the term „life‟ can be understood in terms of its
characteristics. Different authors show different definitions of
language. Linguists (= people who study language scientifically)
define language in their own ways.
Actually, there is no single comprehensive answer to the question
"What is Language?‟ So, it can be said that the only answer to the
question "What is language?‟ is Language is language.
Here are some Authors' definitions of language:
Language is purely human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of
voluntarily produced symbols. Sapir)1921(
Language, as Sapir said, is human and non-instinctive. By human, it
means language is the attribute of human. That is, only normal
humans possess it. Animals do not. Animals have a communication
system, but it is not developed. By non-instinctive, it means that it is
not acquired and that a child has to learn the language of his/her own
society.
When we study human language, we are approaching what some
might call the "human essence," the distinctive qualities of mind that
are, so far as we know, unique to man.

Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (1968, 1972)

Language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite to
length and constructed out of a finite set of sentences. Noam
Chomsky. )1957(
Chomsky conveys that each sentence has a structure and human brain
is competent to construct infinite different sentences from out of the
finite (limited) set of sounds/symbols belonging to a particular
language. And that the human brain is productive that a child can
produce a sentence that has never been said or heard before.

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Language is a symbol system based on pure arbitrary conventions.

Robins (1985)
According to this definition, language is a symbol system. Every
written language chooses some symbols for its chosen sounds. For
example, the English sound /k/ has the symbol <k> for it, but the
Arabic sound /k/ has the symbol <‫>ك‬. The alphabets of the language
are formed from such symbols which are systematically joined to
form meaningful words. The system of the language is purely
arbitrary. This means that there is no one to one correspondence
between the structure of the word and the symbols it stands for. The
English combination <b.o.o.k>stands for „a written work or
composition that has been published (printed on pages bound
together)‟. It could not be <k.o.o.b> or <o.o.b.k>.

However, the Arabic combination <‫ك‬.‫ت‬.‫ا‬.‫ >ب‬stands for ‫“باتكك‬a book”.

It could
not be <‫ت‬.‫ب‬.‫ا‬.‫>ك‬or <‫ت‬.‫ك‬.‫ا‬.‫>ب‬

It is obviously evident from all the 3 definitions mentioned above that

it is not possible to have a single comprehensive and satisfactory
definition of language that shows all its characteristics. On the basis
of the aforementioned definitions, it would be better to list and
discuss briefly the various characteristics of language that
distinguishes the human language from the animal communication.
This is given in details below:

Human Language vs. Animal Communication

Since language is a form/mode of human communication, most
linguists would undoubtedly agree that although many animals are
able to communicate, they do not actually have „language‟ in the
sense that humans do. Birds may sing; cats may meow and purr, dogs
bark and growl, apes grunt, scream and even chatter, but they are not
assumed to be using these sounds in the way humans do. „Language‟
is therefore a major attribute distinguishing humans from the rest of
the animal kingdom.
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The main characteristics of language:

Displacement:
Human beings can talk about past and future time. This property of
human language is called displacement. It allows human beings to talk about
things and events not present in the immediate environment.
It refers to the idea that humans can talk about things that are not
physically present or that do not even exist. Speakers can talk about
the past and the future, and can express hopes and dreams. A human's
speech is not limited to here and now.
Most animals can communicate about things in the immediate
environment only, not past or future. When your pet cat comes home
and stands at your feet calling meow, you are likely to understand this
message as relating to that immediate time and place. If you ask your
cat where it has been and what it has been up to, you'll probably get
the same meow response. Animal
communication seems to be designed
exclusively for this moment, here and
now. It cannot effectively be used to
relate events that are far removed in
time and place.. On the other hand,
human language can communicate
about things that are absent as well as
about things are present.
Displacement is one of the features that separates human language
from other forms of primate communication.
Bee communication is a striking exception because it seems to
have some version of displacement. If a honeybee scout finds a new
source of nectar, it returns to the hive and performs a complex dance
(waggle dance) in order to inform the other bees of the location of the
nectar, which may be several miles away But even they are limited in
this ability. They can inform each other only about nectar. Bees
cannot communicate with each other about past events or future so
their communication is limited since it is about only present in the
immediate environment.

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In contrast to animals,
human language can cope
with any subject whatever,
and it doesn’t matter how far
away the topic of conversation
is in time and space.

Arbitrariness:
Arbitrariness is the absence of any natural or logical
relationship between a word's meaning and its sound or form
Languages are generally made up of both arbitrary and iconic
symbols. In spoken languages, this takes the form of onomatopoeias
(the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by
imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent) In
English "murmur", in Mandarin "māo" (cat). In ASL "cup", "me"
"up/down", etc. There is no intrinsic or logical connection between a
sound form (signal) and its meaning. Whatever name a human
language attributes an object is purely arbitrary. The word "car" is
nothing like an actual car. Spoken words are really nothing like the
objects they represent. This is further demonstrated by the fact that
different languages attribute very different names to the same object.
Signed languages are transmitted visually and this allows for a
certain degree of iconicity. For example, in the ASL sign HOUSE, the
hands are flat and touch in a way that resembles the roof and walls of
a house.[3] However, many other signs are not iconic, and the
relationship between form and meaning is arbitrary. Thus, while
Hockett did not account for the possibility of non-arbitrary form-
meaning relationships, the principle still generally applies. Instead of
universal rules and uniformity, then, language relies on associations
of word meanings deriving from cultural conventions. The cultural
aspect of a society are passed from an old generation to a new.
In honeybee communication there is a natural relation between the
waggle run duration and the distance toward the entity signaled (the more
distant the source, the more longer the waggling). The vigor of the tail-wagging
and the speed of the turns are also related to the quality of the source found.
Consequently, finding a good resource generates a long and vigorous dance,
attracting thus more fellow bees to the search (Preece & Beekman, 2014).
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Productivity
Productivity/ creativity/ open-endedness- is the endless potential number
of message or utterance in human language. It refers to the idea that language-
users can create and understand novel utterances. Humans are able to produce
an unlimited amount of utterances. Every moment human language has the
ability to create new messages or utterances as a response to the existing new
realities. A new message and any topic can be produced at any time example:
you are studying a subject and you are discussing new topics that you have
heard before. Animals don’t possess this feature in their communication
system, they have signals in their system of communication relating to a
particular occasion and object. This limiting feature in animal system is
referred to as fixed reference.
Fromkin V., et al (2003:8, 9) say that creativity aspect of human
language is the ability to create new sentences never spoken before
and to understand sentences never heard before.
Also related to productivity is the concept of grammatical
patterning, which facilitates the use and comprehension of language.
Language is not stagnant, but is constantly changing. New idioms are
created all the time and the meaning of signals can vary depending on
the context and situation.

Traditional transmission
Traditional transmission also called cultural transmission. While
humans are born with innate language capabilities, language is
acquired after birth in a social setting.
In this feature we see that humans have the tendency of acquiring a
language according to the cultural environment they are exposed to
and we do not inherit our language from our parents. We may inherit
physical features such as brown eyes and dark hair from our parents,
we do not inherit their language. We acquire a language in a culture
with other speakers and not from parental genes.
Take a baby born in Yemen to an American speaking couple, in
his early age he is taken to grow up in America , and after some
fifteen years he returns to Yemen, we will notice that he will be a
fluent speaker of English and above all with an American accent.
However, he will still have his physical characteristics inherited from
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his biological parents. This feature does not exist in animal

communication system. A young cat for example will always produce
a meow sound regardless of where it may grow up. Then the cultural
transmission is the process of whereby language is passed on from
one generation to the next. The cultural aspect of a society are passed
from an old generation to a new. Animals have the some degree of
tradition or cultural transmission because there are aspect which can
be passed from an old animal to a new born.. Language and culture
are woven together.

Biology
Human language
Speech organs, or articulators, produce the sounds
of language. Organs used for speech include the lips, teeth, alveolar
ridge, hard palate, velum (soft palate), uvula, glottis and various parts
of the tongue. They can be divided into two types: passive articulators
and active articulators. Active articulators move relative to passive
articulators, which remain still, to produce various speech sounds, in
particular manners of articulation.[1] The upper lip, teeth, alveolar
ridge, hard palate, soft palate, uvula, and pharynx wall are passive
articulators. The most important active articulator is the tongue as it is
involved in the production of the majority of sounds. The lower lip is
another active articulator. But glottis is not an active articulator
because it is only a space between vocal folds
On a purely biological level, the human voice box and tongue are very
unique, and are required to make the sounds we recognize as language

Animal
communication
Other animals have
different biological
structures, which
impact the way
they make sounds

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Duality
Human language
Definition
"[Duality of patterning," says David Ludden, "is what
gives language such expressive power. Spoken languages are
composed of a limited set of meaningless speech sounds that are
combined according to rules to form meaningful words"
Human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously.
This property is called duality (or “double articulation”). In speech
production, we have a physical level at which we can produce
individual sounds, like n, b and i. As individual sounds, none of these
discrete forms has any intrinsic meaning. In a particular combination
such as bin, we have another level producing a meaning that is
different from the meaning of the combination in nib. So, at one level,
we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct
meanings. This duality of levels is, in fact, one of the most
economical features of human language because, with a limited set of
discrete
sounds, we are capable of producing a very large number of sound
combinations
(e.g. words) which are distinct in meaning.
Among other creatures, each communicative signal appears to be a
single fixed form that cannot be broken down into separate parts.
Although your dog may be able to produce woof (“I’m happy to see
you”), it does not seem to do so on the basis of a distinct level of
production combining the separate elements of w+oo+f. If the dog
was operating with the double level (i.e. duality), then we might
expect to hear different combinations with different meanings, such as
oowf (“I’m hungry”) and
foow (“I’m really bored”).
Duality of patterning: Large numbers of meaningful signals (e.g.,
morphemes or words) produced from a small number of meaningless
units (e.g., phonemes)

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Duality of Patterning
Duality of patterning means that the discrete parts of a language can
be recombined in a systematic way to create new forms. For example,
the English word “cat” is composed of the sounds [k], [æ], and [t],
which are meaningless when they stand alone. However, they can be
combined to form different words, such as “act” and “tacit,” which
have distinct meanings. These individual sounds we learned earlier
are called phonemes, and represent the lowest level in the hierarchy of
speech organization. We also have learned about the higher levels of
organization, including morphology, syntax, and semantics, which all
work to govern the combination of individual phonemes. The various
patterning of these speech sounds allow for the expression of a
potentially infinite number of meaningful language sequences

The Structures of Phonology and Syntax

"The question of whether the structures of phonology and syntax are
separate and distinct is relevant to the notion of duality of patterning...
The division between meaningful and meaningless elements is less
sharp than it appears, and the fact that words are composed of
phonemes is arguably just a special case of the pervasive hierarchical
structure that is present in language...
"Of all Hockett's design features, duality of patterning is the most
misrepresented and misunderstood; in particular, it is frequently
conflated with or linked to productivity (Fitch 2010). Hockett seems
to have regarded duality of patterning as the single most important
breakthrough in the evolution of language (Hockett 1973: 414), yet he
himself was unsure whether to ascribe duality of patterning to the
dance of the honeybee (Hackett 1958: 574)."
(D.R. Ladd, "An Integrated View of Phonetics, Phonology, and
Prosody." Language, Music, and the Brain: A Mysterious
Relationship, ed. by Michael A. Arbib. MIT Press, 2013)

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‘Design Feature’ 5: Dual structure

Language creates meaning through the combination of discrete units.
These units, however, exist on two quite different levels. On the first
level the units are a closed and small set called phonemes. Each
phoneme is meaningless in itself, though there are cases where a word
(‘I’ or ‘a’ for example) consists of a single phoneme. In English there
are about forty. The actual sound which is identified as a particular
phoneme will vary considerably. For example, the English phoneme
/r/ is pronounced in a variety of ways, depending on region and
dialect, or even, by speakers who cannot make any of these sounds, as
the sound associated with the letter W. But from the linguistic point of
view none of these variations alters its phonemic identity. All that
matters is that it be recognised as a token of the phoneme /r/. On the
second level, phonemes combine to form words, and words combine
to form larger grammatical units. The word ‘rat’, for example, is a
succession of three phonemes /r/ /æ/ /t/. This sign can in turn combine
with others to 1 By convention in linguistics, an asterisk in front of a
sentence indicates that it is incorrect. form sequences with meanings
of their own. This combinatory power enables languages to create a
virtually infinite set of meaningful words and word combinations.
Animals communication:-
They did not have this property in their communication they have
only one signal for what they want. It is limited.
ex 1-monky's warning call
2-bee's dancing
They did not have phonemes and signs are not made up from smaller
parts
Ex 1-apart of bird song is still a birdsong.

Total Feedback
Human language
Speakers of a language can hear their own speech and can control and
modify what they are saying as they say it. Similarly, signers see, feel,
and control their signing .The sender of a message also perceives the
message. That is, you hear what you say. Humans can simultaneously
receive the linguistic signals they transmit, and can thus continually
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monitor their communicative output. We hear what we are talking and

correct our mistakes.
Ex:- when someone want to say five but by mistake he said fifteen
and he corrects himself by saying five
What Is Language Feedback?
Language feedback is information provided to a student by an
instructor or by another student that helps both that student and others
in the classroom understand how well they are using the target
language. It can be used to give a general indication of proficiency in
any particular skill (speaking, writing, listening or reading) or it can
be used to hone in on specific topics (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) that
are new or are in need of review
Feedback is information a teacher or another speaker, including
another learner, gives to learners on how well they are doing, either to
help the learner improve specific points, or to help plan their learning.
Feedback can be immediate, during an activity, or delayed, at the end
of an activity or part of a learning programme and can take various
forms
Animal communication:-
Animals do not have feedback and can be contrasted with visual
modes of animal communication;
Ex 1-sticklebacks cannot see the courtship motions they perform
2-Monkeys showing their behinds.
3- butterfly colors it does not see itself in a feedback way.

Learnability:
Human language:-
Users of a language can learn with enough effort other language by
using his own language and he can learn and understand his language
well by learning all fields of the language.
The study of language learnability is not the same thing as the study
of how language acquisition actually proceeds, either in infants or
among mature speakers. Learnability deals with how any agent at
all—human, animal, or machine—could in principle achieve such a
thing as acquiring a language. The kinds of questions raised include
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what input data are needed and what procedures would work for
acquiring mastery of what sorts of linguistic systems. To a
considerable extent, therefore, works on language learnability have a
logical or mathematical character, not an empirical character. Related
topics include the psychological and computational study of pattern
recognition in psychology and the philosophical study of induction.
The published works on learnability often present theorems couched
in terms of abstract devices, such as Turing machines or other
automata. They do not typically present empirical findings, but they
do set limits on viable hypotheses and point out obstacles standing in
the way of empirical theorizing about language acquisition.
“Acquirability” might have been a better term than “learnability,”
because many linguists believe language is not entirely learned
through experience with the environment in the way that many
everyday skills are; it is acquired via rapid unconscious triggering of
an inbuilt language-acquisition component of our brains—a
component that in effect specifies most of the details of language
design in advance. But “learnability” is a familiar term, and its use
here should be understood as neutral regarding the empirical realities
of language acquisition. Some key works on learnability of languages
emanate from fields like mathematics, logic, and informatics. The
annotations in this article sometimes contain parenthetical warnings
that the work is from one of these technical fields rather than from
within linguistics proper

Animal communication:-
Animals cannot acquire the communication system of another species
(another kind of animals)
Ex the dog cannot acquire the cat communication system
The bee cannot acquire the ant communication system

Reflexiveness :
Human language:-
In a human language, one can communicate about communication
itself we can use the language to talk about the language itself , to
analyze the language. We can speak about speaking and write to
discuss writing.
Ex – I did not say that
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_ The sentence you are reading just now contains a relative clauses.
_The sentence in E consist of subject + verb + object + complement
Types of reflexiveness :-
1-language codes (e.g., a comment in English about Chinese)
2- single code (e.g., a comment in English about English)
Reflexiveness
is one of Charles Hockett's 16 Design features of language which
states that
'' in a language the speaker can use his/her language to talk about
language''.
Speakers of a language are able to have knowledge about
their language and be able to reflect upon it
Reflexiveness : using language to talk about language which involves
ability to speak of abstract things. The language used to describe
language is usually called metalanguage
The end point of this is that we can construct or describe language
with language. I wish I had another term for this concept because it's a
tad intimidating/pretentious, but I can't think of one. It has to do with
two particular features of language that we use pretty well constantly.
The first is the ability to create terms that refer to chunks of other
concepts grouped together. Douglas Hofstadter makes a very big deal
of this in his lecture on Analogy as the Core of Cognition. We build
concepts then group them to create a new concept that consists of, at
least, all the chunk's constituent concepts. I say at least because there
is a gestalt that operates almost invariably when we do this concept
chunking thing. I define reflexivity without mentioning chunking, but
that's ok: chunking is referential in nature, but just operates on groups.
The second feature of language we use is its inherent capability to use
it to discuss or describe language itself. This hardly seems like a
feature because we do it all the time when we teach and learn about
language, but we create language to serve our mental capacities, one
of which is to reflect on the important things we do, such as use
language. Natural languages are not perfectly suited to this (languages
we speak and write versus contrived linguistic constructs such as
computer programming languages), as evidenced by our reliance on
phonetic gizmos when we write about how to pronounce a word, but
it works well enough.
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Types of reflexive language:-

In every language it is possible to speak about speech, that is, to use
language to communicate about the activity of using language. Such
uses of language are reflexive in nature. Reflexive use of language
may involve two distinct, named language codes (e.g., a comment in
English about Chinese) or the reflexivity may operate more narrowly
within a single such code (e.g., a comment in English about English).
In the latter case, the same language is operating simultaneously in
two functional modes as it serves as both the means and the object of
communication. A variety of types of linguistic reflexivity can be
identified.
Firstly, we may refer to 10 John A. Lucy Reflexive language and the
human disciplines 11 general regularities in the structure or
functioning of language use (e.g., '' Get is an irregular verb," "Ctlantro
is another name for coriander" "One shouldn't say 'damn it' in front of
children," "Spanish consonants are pronounced slightly differently in
Mexico than in Spain," "A joke is a kind of humorous story"). We
may even talk about language in general (e.g., "Many languages
signal gender differences in their pronouns," "Languages are capable
of referring to their own structure and use"). Secondly, we may refer
to or report particular acts of speech (real or imagined) in a variety of
ways: by representing most of the speech as we remember or imagine
it having happened (e.g., "He said 'Hey, that's a great haircut you
got!'"), by representing part of the speech (e.g., "He said [that] I got a
great haircut"), by characterizing the speech without overtly
representing it (e.g., "Tom complimented me today," "Bill told a joke
at lunch"), or by some mixture of characterization and representation
(e.g., "Tom complimented me today on how great my haircut was").
Perhaps because of their relative clarity, these two forms of reflexivity
(it., overt reference to language regularities and reports of particular
speech events) have been the main focus of research interest to date,
but they do not exhaust the forms of reflexivity in language. Within a
given linguistic code, language use is reflexive in a variety of other
ways. For example, all languages contain indexical forms which
change their value depending on the actual event of speaking. In order

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to understand these forms a person needs to be able to compute the

parameters of the use of language in a specific context. For example,
the denotational meaning of the pronoun I depends on knowing the
identity of 'the person uttering an instance of I,' that is, the form
indexes an aspect of the specific speech event itself (an instance of
language use) as part of its meaning and is, in this sense, reflexive. So
too for other forms such as tense markers on verbs (e.g., English -ed,
'past,' which indicates that the event in question occurred prior to the
present moment of utterance). These forms reflexively take account of
the ongoing event of speaking itself, in terms of which we can use and
understand their referential and prcdicational value. Still other forms
are defined essentially with respect to regularities in the use of
language code. For example, a proper name, in the pure case, denotes
anything to which the name is assigned by convention. That is, in the
pure case, a proper name denotes a particular object not by virtue of
signaling some substantive information about its properties but only
by indexing the existence of a conventional label for that specific
object - that the object is so named. In just this sense, such names are
reflexive in nature. In addition to the above types of reflexive forms,
there are a whole variety of other structural devices which also tell
listeners how to interpret the speech they are hearing. In some
languages, it is possible to help create an event centering on speech by
explicit description of the particular speech event regularity as it
occurs The reflexivity in such cases is not localized in a single form
but rather in an overall design of the utterance. In a like manner,
structural parallelism in poetry sets up formal equivalences that tell
listeners that certain things are to be compared with one another.
Again, a constellation of textual features tells listeners how to
interpret the ongoing speech. Indeed, to the extent that specific textual
co-occurrences - even those based on grammatical patterns - have
meaning value, they perform a similar guiding function. The orderly
array of elements may guide speakers in their interpretation of an
utterance. For instance, where there are regular word order patterns
which place elements with an agentive role in initial position relative
to the propositional utterance as a whole, then placing an item in that
position signals to the listener that it is to be taken as the agent. In this
sense, one part of the code structures the interpretation of another
part. In sum, speech is permeated by reflexive activity as speakers
remark on language, report utterances, index and describe aspects of
the speech event, invoke conventional names, and guide listeners in
the proper interpretation of their utterances. This reflexivity is so

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pervasive and essential that we can say that language is, by nature,
fundamentally reflexive.
Animal communication:-
Animal did not have this property in their communications
Ex 1-when the dog bark it did not think about its barking
2-bees dance is about food and cannot be used to be about the
dance itself

References:-

 Yule, G. (2006). The study of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.
 Chomsky, Noam. 1968. Language and mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World.
 Birchenall, L. B. (2016). Animal communication and human language: An
overview. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 29, Article
ID 28000.
 http://www.timpenner.ca/pmw/Linguistic_Reflexivity
 johnlucy/papersmaterials/1993%20RL-Ch1.pdf
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_organ
 Widdowson, H.G. (1996) Linguistics, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

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