Do animals have a language?
Hockett`s design feature
Rachel Iileka
Petrina Hamulungu
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Do animals have a language?
Charles Hockett, a linguist, offered a series of responses that have had a significant
impact on the field. He refers to the characteristics shared by all languages as "design
features of language in his description of these traits.
The three phases of Hockett's reflection on the design features of the language are as
follows:
 the initial statement, which explains a comparative and cumulative approach to
defining language
 the best-known presentation from "The Origin of Speech“
 the most extensive one from "Logical considerations in the study of animal
communication",
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Do animals have a language?
 In order to refute the claim that animals have a language, this presentation will
argue that animals do not have a language, but they have a communication
system.
 The claim that animals do not have a language is going to be discussed according
to Hockett’s major design features of language. These are:
 Displacements
 Cultural transmission of language
 Arbitrariness
 Semanticity
 Productivity
 Language is a human ability
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Animals have a communication
mechanism
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Displacement
 The concepts of antecedents (verbal messages) and consequences (behaviours
triggered by messages) underlie the explanation of displacement: A
communication is said to be "displaced" when the essential elements of its causes
and effects are separated from the moment and location of transmission (Čadková,
2015, p.11).
 Humans might discuss events that occurred ten years ago. However, the animals
are unable to convey this information to other animals.
 Hence, animal communication lacks displacement because it can not refer to
things beyond the geographical and temporal environment in which they were
produced and behaviour outside of this context
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Cultural transmission of language
 Hockett and Hockett (1960) defines cultural transmission as learning and teaching,
such as when a toddler learns a language. Language in humans is both taught and
learnt.
 The first step in understanding cultural transmission is to distinguish between the
two processes that contribute to the establishment of a communication system
inside a specific organism: genetic inheritance and cultural transmission.
 Cultural transmission is a feature of language that animals lack.
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Arbitrariness
 Monaghan and Christiansen (2006) claim that language is arbitrary because of how
these meaningful units are related to their meanings and instead of being rational
or motivated
 The meanings exist because of convention.
 The fact that there are so many distinct languages in the world serves as an
example of how we may refer to dogs as "cats" and cats as "dogs," or any other
two words, as long as the sender and receiver are aware of the norm.
 Animal communication lacks arbitrariness for instance vervet monkey alarm signals
without any issues, assuming that the receivers were aware of the "tradition" (i.e.,
were hard-wired appropriately).
 Yet in animals, what we would see as a non-linguistic trait is frequently the main
message.
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Semanticity
 Burling, Armstrong, Blount, Callaghan, Foster, King and Wynn (1993) define
semanticity as signals in a communication system bear some meaning, which is to
say that they relate in some way to the world of the communicators.
 Every communication unit must stand for something else (in other words, its being
is that of a sign).
 Vervet monkeys, have three distinct warning cries for three distinct groups of
predators, including raptors, terrestrial animals, and snakes, which depend on
surprise to catch the monkey. Whereas certain things are represented by animal
signals, the number of items is often modest, limiting the semanticity of animal
communication systems.
 Thus, animal communication lacks semanticity.
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Productivity
 Productivity, or the ability to mix the components of language in an unlimited
number of ways, is another distinctive quality (Yang, 2005).
 Animals are not particularly skilled in productivity.
 Chimpanzees seldom ever start conversations, not even adult chimpanzees.
 If you are speaking and have a notion, you should express it. However, animals can
not speak and express their notion.
 All languages are infinitely flexible, and all language speakers are capable of
constructing an infinite number of phrases. But, animals are not able to construct
an infinite number of phrases
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Language is a human ability
 Matthews state that (2003) humans are the only species that can learn and acquire
language because they can make sounds (Phonetics and phonology). The only
other species with highly organised cognitive processes that can create speech is a
human.
 In order to talk, humans also evolved vocal chords that are thinner and less fatty
than those of our monkey cousins. For instance, we can use our lips to make the
sounds /p/ and /m/, /t/ using our teeth and tongue, /g/ using our tongue and
palate, etc.
 Animals have no place in human speech, and both their way of speaking and their
sounds cannot be categorised.
 As a result, only humans have the ability to speak, while animals cannot.
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

In conclusion
 Only humans are capable of using language, which not only enables them to speak
with one another but also enables them to construct absurd but comprehensible
sentences with an unlimited variety of words, and sentences.
 Although there are some animals which seem to exhibit some forms of human
language, animals do not have a language.
 Thus, it can be concluded that animals do not have a language but a
communication system
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

References
Beecher, M. D. (2021). Why are no animal communication systems simple languages? Frontiers in
Psychology, 701.
Burling, R., Armstrong, D. F., Blount, B. G., Callaghan, C. A., Foster, M. L., King, B. J., ... & Wynn, T.
(1993). Primate calls, human language, and nonverbal communication [and comments and
reply]. Current Anthropology, 34(1), 25- 53.
Čadková, L. (2015). Do they speak language?. Biosemiotics, 8(1), 9-27.
Clutton-Brock, T. H., and Albon, S. D. (1979). The roaring of red deer and the evolution of onest
advertisement. Behaviour 69, 145–170. doi: 10.1163/156853979X00449
Hockett, C. F., & Hockett, C. D. (1960). The origin of speech. Scientific American, 203(3), 88-97.
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga

Janik, V. M. (2014). Cetacean vocal learning and communication. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 28, 60–65. doi:
10.1016/j.conb.2014.06.010
Monaghan, P., & Christiansen, M. H. (2006). Why form-meaning mappings are not entirely arbitrary in language.
In Proceedings of the 28th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 1838-1843).
Matthews, P. (2003). Linguistics: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wacewicz, S., & Żywiczyński, P. (2015). Language evolution: why Hockett’s design features are a non-
starter. Biosemiotics, 8, 29-46.
Yang, C. (2005). On productivity. Linguistic variation yearbook, 5(1), 265-302.
Rachel Iileka Petrina Hamulunga