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 dog-iron and squeak, til now bees perform their elaborate waggle dance. Language however, involves organisation take on sounds in the correct grammatical localize 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, benignant speech communication is much, much more(prenominal) than arranging particular sounds. It is an take for our thoughts and desires, it allows us to convey our feelings, our hopes and dreams, we ass even use oral communication to deceive differents or regularize jokes. In fact, it is this complexity of human speech that prompts researcher Sternberg to repugn that language is solely a human ability. He comments, Parrots may introduce certain speech only when they are non really using language . What they say is not organise d and does not involve combining language to pass a message to others. (Sternberg, 1995, p.345) So can it be assumed then that animals do not possess this lineament? Research conducted by Savage-Rumbaugh (1986) with pygmy chimpanzee monkeys may rede otherwise and behaviourists such as skinner (1957) would argue that language is learnt as a process of re-inforcement and thitherfore, 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 inherent human ability, disagrees. If an animal had a power as biologically advan! tageous as language but somehow hadnt use 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 make believe a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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