Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 54

Nonhuman animals also communicate; this reminds humanity that we’re not as different from other animals as people often like to think.

Although chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught several varieties of basic sign-language and can use these signs to assemble basic sentences — on the order, generally speaking, of a three-year-old human’s sentences — it’s important to remember that chimps and gorillas haven’t invented or evolved language on their own in the wild. This fact suggests that the capacity to do something (learn language) doesn’t necessarily indicate that it will occur in the wild.

Nonhuman animal communication is different from human communication and language, though, in certain ways:

 Nonhuman language is symbolically simple. A monkey’s screech for “hawk” (an aerial predator) is surely distinct from a squawk for “python” (a ground predator), but “hawk” or “python” are ALL these sounds can mean. On the other hand, humans can use language to say “That guy is a real snake,” attributing snake-like qualities to a person.

 Nonhuman words are phonemically simple. That is, although human words can be constructed from many sounds (like the word constitutional) nonhuman “words” are usually formed of two or fewer sounds (each distinct sound of a language is called a phoneme).

 Nonhuman language is grammatically simple. Although human sentences can be constructed from many words (like “I broke the glass, that was sitting on the edge of the table, before I slipped on a banana peel!”), nonhuman “sentences” are very rare and short (normally no more than two sounds made one after another), and grammatical rules for their assembly are simple.