Animals and humans both communicate, or express their ideas, in a number of forms. Unlike humans, however, animals do not use language in its truest sense because they do not communicate in complex, structured, and grammatical sentences. different from the linguistic point of view, animals do have language from a linguistic point of view. Animal communication systems include the use of body language, vocalizations, and chemical signals, and can be studied using linguistics. One of the reasons why animals have language is because they use communication systems to convey information and meaning.

Can animals speak their language?

Since normativity is essential to our language, animals don’t have a language in the sense we do. Animals produce sounds thar express their emotions, and sone can use signs in a pavlovian way, as a result of an association between previous uses and succeeding events.

Animal Communication System: True Language?

A basic question pondered at some time or other by all human language users is whether any other species also has a real language. Certainly other species have forms of communication, but "communication” is not synonymous with “language”. No known animal uses a language in the wild, but animals do communicate with each other is system called codes. A true language differs from a signal code in terms of several essential ffeatures communication systems,both human and animal communications

have some features:

1. A Mode of Communication: The mode of communication may be vocal-auditory as in human and most animal systems, or visual as in sign language and many other animal systems (e.g. bees), or tactile, or even chemical (e.g. moths).

2. Semanticity: The signals in any communication system have meaning. Without this feature, the system would consist merely of noise (in the technical sense of a meaningless jumble).

3. Pragmatic Function: All systems of communication serve some useful purpose(s), from helping the species to stay alive to influencing others’ behavior in some way (as in TV commercials).

Signal Codes Vs Language*

Some of the signal codes used by animals may exhibit one or more of the features describe above, but only to a limited degree. For example, the dance of the honeybees has limited displacement—it communicates information about the location of a distant food source seen in the recent past—and parts of the dance are arbitrary, though others are representational. The bee’s system is not completely productive since they cannot. For example, convey information about vertical distance or direction. Most signal codes consist of a small, finite number of discrete signals, often concerned with essentials of survival such as food, danger, or reproduction. These systems lack a mechanism for introducing new signals: they are closed communication systems. Thus when the animal is confronted with a novel situation, it has no way to communicate about situation (an obvious disadvantage for the best chances of survival). Language, in contrast, must have all of the language features to be considered language. Without one or more, it would simply be a signal code.

Written by:

Salwa Fahira, St. Nurauliya Fahmi, Fadillah Mutmainnah, Masruddin

(PBI A-2023)