3 Prairie Dog Language Researcher Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona Universi
ID: 3499636 • Letter: 3
Question
3 Prairie Dog Language Researcher Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University has studied prairie dogs for more than twenty years and concluded that their communication system has many of the same features as human language. According to Slobodchikoff (1998), prairie dogs have different barks ("nouns") for different predators, and they combine these "words" with other sounds, or "modifiers,"that indicate size, color, and other features. He also claims that prairie dogs coin new "words" by assigning new barks to new objects or animals in their environment. Prairie dogs, he argues, have words for coy- otes, skunks, and badgers, as well as for such nonpredators as deer, elk, and cows, and even for "the man with the yellow coat" Investigate Slobodchikoff's work on prairie dogs and determine which of Hockett's design features prairie dogs seem to possess and which they don't.Explanation / Answer
In the mid-1980s, Constantine Slobodchikoff dedicated his research to the study of social behavior and referential communication in prairie dogs. He indulged himself in studying the alarm calls of prairie dogs. From his study, he could conclude that prairie dogs have a 'sophisticated communication system'. This system helps them in identifying the predator species and also functions to provide detailed information about the respective predator, that is, its size, shape and color. He even unlocked the potential for displacement in the prairie dogs. Displacement is the capability to communicate about things that are absent. He also found the unique capability of framing new words in prairie dogs , in relation to new objects or animals in their surroundings. This ability is called productivity.
From his research, Slobodchikoff could assert that prairie dogs have a 'developed communication system' and exhibit 'social behavior', living together in different social groups. He also found in them 'varying escape behaviors' for varying predator calls. There communication system and language provide reasons for their existence, apart from mating. At present, Slobodchikoff is trying to unlock the grammar of prairie dogs via computer technology, in order to comprehend the nature of their vocalization.
Charles Hockett was a linguist, whose 13 design features of human language were used to indicate that these features are also present in prairie dogs. These features are a vocal-auditory channel (or the fact that speaking and hearing are the two mediums used for language and communication), broadcast transmission and directional reception (or sounds being transmitted in all directions and the direction from which the sounds are arriving are being comprehended by the listeners), transitoriness (or rapid fading of sounds or its existence for a short time period) Interchangeability (or the capability to say what one hears), total feedback ( or the ability to hear one's own speech and control and modify what one intends to say), specialization (or sending linguistic signals for communication, rather than for some biological activity), semanticity (or the fact that specific signals are linked to certain meanings), arbitrariness ( or the fact that naming an object is completely arbitrary), discreteness (or the fact that linguistic representations can be crumbled into small discrete units, which can be stringed together in certain ways, following certain rules), displacement (or the ability to talk about things that are physically absent or non-existent), productivity (or the ability to frame new types of sounds), traditional transmission ( or the fact that language is acquired post one's birth in a social setting, making it culturally transmitted) and duality of patterning (or the fact that messages, which are meaningful comprise of smaller meaningful units called words and morphemes. These words and morphemes also comprise of smaller meaningless units called phonemes).
Hockett found prevarication, reflexiveness and learnability to be uniquely specific to human beings. These three features were added later by Hockett to assert that language is different from communication. It is a fact that almost all animals communicate in some or the other way. But communication will only turn into language, if all the 16 design features of human language are possessed by an animal. Prevarication is the capability to convey wrong and meaningless messages, thus lying and deceiving via language. Reflexiveness is the ability to utilize language to discuss about language. Learnability is the feature of human language, which denotes that one can teach and learn language. Prairie dogs do not have these three design features of human language.
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