Language is an essential part of everyday life. What Darwin called ‘the sweet music of our species’ has in fact had a vital role in the establishment of the human as ‘the dominant species’; language creates a strong connection within all members of the same social group and allows to convey a virtually infinite quantity of information, involving both concrete and abstract concepts, as well as past, present and upcoming events. Biologically speaking, this is has been and still is a huge advantage over all other species, for which efficiency and variety in communication are fairly limited - if present at all.
A language that can be considered such, has five main properties: it is symbolic, since it is based on the combination of symbols of various kind, which are arbitrary and represent concrete and abstract ideas; it is structured, since said combinations of symbols have to follow syntax and grammar rules, in order to be correctly understood; its final goal is to provide meaning, as each symbol activates the respective mental representation; language is also generative, as the symbols can be …show more content…
Neam ‘Nim’ Chimpsky, an infant pygmy chimpanzee who had been raised among humans and taught ASL, was able to sign at a very basic level with his trainees. He could even efficiently combine more signs, generally two or three; however, combining more signs did not always result in a different general meaning or any kind of specification as unnecessary repetition often occurred (i.e. ‘play me Nim’ instead of just ‘play me’). Washoe, another primate who was taught ASL, had learned 160 different signs by the age of 5 and was able to combine them; in a session recorded in a videotape, when shown a doll in a cup by her trainee, she was able to correctly formulate the phrase ‘baby in my drink’ (Terrace, Petitto, Sanders, & Bever,
A language that can be considered such, has five main properties: it is symbolic, since it is based on the combination of symbols of various kind, which are arbitrary and represent concrete and abstract ideas; it is structured, since said combinations of symbols have to follow syntax and grammar rules, in order to be correctly understood; its final goal is to provide meaning, as each symbol activates the respective mental representation; language is also generative, as the symbols can be …show more content…
Neam ‘Nim’ Chimpsky, an infant pygmy chimpanzee who had been raised among humans and taught ASL, was able to sign at a very basic level with his trainees. He could even efficiently combine more signs, generally two or three; however, combining more signs did not always result in a different general meaning or any kind of specification as unnecessary repetition often occurred (i.e. ‘play me Nim’ instead of just ‘play me’). Washoe, another primate who was taught ASL, had learned 160 different signs by the age of 5 and was able to combine them; in a session recorded in a videotape, when shown a doll in a cup by her trainee, she was able to correctly formulate the phrase ‘baby in my drink’ (Terrace, Petitto, Sanders, & Bever,