Question: ‘How do animal communication systems differ from humans? Can primates acquire language?’
Answer: Language has always been considered a uniquely human characteristic form of communication; ‘mans most important cultural invention, the quintessential example of his capacity to use symbols, and a biologically unprecedented event irrevocably separating him from other animals.’ (Pinker 1955) The absence of language is a reflection of what information must be transferred with in the species; constrained to context, stimulus and response there is no need for grammatical accuracy or structure. There is no doubt that some animals have methods of communication; often as unique to their species as language is to man. ‘our ability to create and understand sentences is a direct manifestation of innate mechanisms that are uniquely human…. Only humans have the intellectual capacity to create sentences according to any grammar’. (Chomsky 1959)...(short extract)
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- Subject: Biological Sciences
- Course: Zoology
- Level: Degree
- Year: 2nd/3rd
- Mark: Not available
- Words: 1786
- Date submitted: March 13, 2009
- Date written: Not available
- References: No
- Document type: Essay*
- Essay ID: 983
