Sunday, January 26, 2014

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 finish off and squeak, til now bees perform their elaborate waggle dance. Language however, involves organization take on sounds in the correct grammatical rig 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, world speech communication is much, much more(prenominal) than arranging particular sounds. It is an consequence for our thoughts and desires, it allows us to convey our feelings, our hopes and dreams, we ass even use delivery to deceive some others or regularize jokes. In fact, it is this complexity of human verbiage that prompts researcher Sternberg to repugn that language is solely a human ability. He comments, Parrots may give tongue to certain terminology only when they are non really using language . What they say is not organ ised and does not involve combining manner of speaking to pass a message to others. (Sternberg, 1995, p.345) So can it be assumed then that animals do not possess this woodland? Research conducted by Savage-Rumbaugh (1986) with pygmy chimpanzee monkeys may enkindle otherwise and behaviourists such as skinner (1957) would argue that language is learnt as a process of re-inforcement and on that pointfore, 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 immanent human ability, disagrees. If an animal had a power as biologically advantageous as language but somehow hadnt apply 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 crite ria that categorises human language. ! If you want to move a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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