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WHAT IS LANGUAGE? Carl Polley

INTRODUCTION

Birds and bees do it. Apes and dolphins do it. Even insects, plants, and single-celled bacteria do it, to a certain extent. Communication, the transfer of information from one organism to another, is a central aspect of the lives of nearly all species. Plants and animals communicate in order to coordinate collective behavior, for example to spread warnings of predators and environmental dangers or in courtship to facilitate the selection of mates. Deceptive signals can be used as camouflage. So what makes language, the human communicative system, unique?

DESIGN FEATURES FOR LANGUAGE

One way to compare human language versus general communication is in terms of design features (Hockett 1960). By considering language as a system, shaped by design features, we can understand what characteristics human language shares with other natural communication systems and learn how language is different. Some other creatures may communicate using systems that rely on only a few of these features (we will return to this topic in a later chapter, Animal communication); the combination of all of them at once is what makes language special. Communicative systems can include the following features:

CHANNEL

Organisms must have a way to transmit signals to each other. Common channels for communication are sight, sound, touch, and even smell. For human language, signals consist of sound, such as with speech or a baby’s cries, or visual communication, as in sign language, writing, and gestures. Primates and birds also use sound to communicate. Other species may use different channels. Honeybees, upon finding a food source, perform a dance to share information on the direction, distance, and quality of the food (Von Frisch 1973). Ants tell each other where the food is by dropping scents, or pheromones, on their way back to the ant colony (Parry and Morgan 1979).

Plants and bacteria also use chemical compounds to send communicative signals. Up to a third of the carbon in CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere by plants is released back into the air in the form of aromatic compounds, some of which serve to share information regarding threats in their environment (Baldwin et al. 2006). Bacteria release and detect signaling proteins with highly specific structures in a process that loosely resembles collective decision-making (Taga and Bassler 2003).

FUNCTION

Communication may be directed toward influencing the behavior of members of the same species, as in courtship and mating behavior, or it may function across species, as in deceptive camouflage behavior. For example, the piping plover, an endangered species of bird that nests along beaches in North America, will feign a broken wing to lure predators away from its eggs and hatchlings (Ristau 1983). Whether such displays of fake injuries are intentional rather than purely instinctual is, nonetheless, an open question.

In some communicative systems, one of the functions of the signal is to carry meaning. This is done by linking a symbolic signal to a reference point, or referent, such as a source of food or an incoming predator.

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EXCHANGE

Systems of communication can involve either a one-way or a two-way exchange of signals. The broken wing display of the piping plover is an example of one-way communication. Human language is two-way, of course, since typically people can both send and receive information through speech, writing, and sign language.

LEARNING

Some forms of communication, including language, involve cultural transmission, or learning individual signals and their functions during the course of one’s lifetime. Human children must learn the sounds, words, and grammatical structures of the languages spoken by their families and communities, and we can infer certain information, such as where someone grew up or where their family is from, by the patterns of speech that a person has learned. Likewise, songbirds also learn how to sing by listening and imitating others of their own species, and communities of birds in separate locations learn different patterns of songs (Kroodsma 2005).

ARBITRARINESS

Links between the form and meaning of signals are often deemed arbitrary, in that there is no reason why they have to be way they are rather than some other way (Saussure 1916/1986:67). For example, the chemical compound H2O is called wai in Hawaiian, shui in Chinese, vai in Samoan, Wasser in German, water in English, and wara in Tok Pisin (spoken in Papua New Guinea). In other words, there is no reason for a single entity to be assigned a particular word form.

However, the arbitrariness of symbols is not always absolute. Consider the shapes in figure 1 below. Which shape do you think should be named bouba and which should be kiki?

FIGURE 1: BOUBA AND KIKI

About 95% of those who answer this question, including English-speaking adults, speakers of other languages, and children as young as 2.5 years old, think that kiki goes well with the sharply angular shape on the left, and that bouba is a good match for the rounded shape on the right (Köhler 1929, Maurer et al. 2006). Non-arbitrary symbols, such as “no smoking” signs have a direct link between the symbol and the meaning. We will discuss this further in the chapter Writing Systems.

COMPOSITIONALITY

Human languages are built up of many types of units, including sentences, words, and individual vowels and consonants. We recombine vowels and consonants to make words, and words can be combined to form phrases and sentences. For example, we can add the suffix -est to most adjectives, forming a new word, as with clear and clearest. Likewise, we can also combine an adjective with a noun, thus conveying a more complex meaning than would be possible when using either word individually, as with the phrases clear window and clear winner.

The different levels of language, or the classes of units that combine to form messages, will be discussed in more detail below. Being highly compositional, language allows for seemingly limitless variation in the expression of complex thoughts and in the variety of possible sentences. Consider, for example, how many sentences can use the phrases clear window or clear winner given above. Each of these phrases can fit into a vast number of contexts, depending on which words you choose to combine them with to produce the sentence.

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Therefore, human language allows us to articulate new and complicated ideas due to its compositionality.

Communicative systems in other species are generally less compositional. For example, in bee dances, the angle of movement along the hive wall varies according to the angle of the sun and the direction of the food source. The speed of the dance, meanwhile, changes according to the distance of the food. How much energy the bee spends dancing is correlated to how desirable the food source is (Von Frisch 1973). Although different types of information can be encoded within separate channels in the bee dance, this is still a far cry from the high degree of compositionality used in human language.

IMAGINATION

For better or for worse, we humans are experts at talking and thinking about things that are not immediately present. This is because human language allows for displaced reference, where a unit of language can refer to something that is not present, an event located at some other point in time, or even some figment of the imagination that never existed at all! The role of imagination makes language unique compared to non-human forms of communication. Almost all animals seem to be limited to communicating about food, predators, and potential mates that are immediately present or in sight.

Some animals can be trained to use language-like symbols to give or respond to requests relating to items that are not immediately present, albeit during communication with humans. For example, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky was taught a modified form of sign language for more than five years in a human-like environment, with trainers who communicated with him as a child, dressed him in clothes, and even changed his diapers. After years of training, Nim was able to produce multi-word expressions. His longest, consisting of sixteen gestures, was Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you (Terrace 1979). In this case, Nim’s request for an orange made reference to an event that had not happened, and therefore could be interpreted as having involved some degree of displaced reference.

In research conducted at the University of Hawai‘i, a bottlenose dolphin named Elele was trained by humans to perform somewhat complex sequences of actions involving objects placed in a pool. Elele could also understand and respond correctly to the command Repeat, used in reference to a complex action that had been performed at a previous point in time (Mercado et al. 1999). Nonetheless, there is little evidence for the use of imagination by animals in the wild to produce or understand communicative signals about things or events that are not physically present.

CREATIVITY

Human beings are also unique in being able to combine units of language creatively to establish new patterns of speech and new meanings. Take, for example, the word-form X-ish, meaning something like ‘resembling X’ or ‘coming from X’, as in foolish or English. In informal English the use of this suffix has also come to mean ‘a little bit X’, as in saddish and happy-ish, or to mean ‘around the time of X’, as in five-ish or soon-ish. If there were some new English word, say, skreeker, meaning some type of animal that is known for making loud piercing cries as it flies by, you would have no difficulty understanding what skreeker-ish would mean. Some linguists also consider productivity, or the use of novel combinations of existing linguistic forms, as a design feature, though it may in fact be a phenomenon that simply emerges from interaction between the design features of compositionality and creativity.

CONSIDERING THE DESIGN FEATURES TOGETHER

Above, we have reviewed several design features that make language what it is. But these are not meant to form an exhaustive list. Perhaps you can think of a few more design features of language. Moreover, certain features, such as arbitrariness and compositionality, seem to be relative concepts rather than absolutes. The bee dance is less compositional than human language, because there are fewer units being combined to produce a signal. In this sense, it is best to think of design features as existing on a continuum, or a range of values, instead of working as simple on/off switches. Do you think any of the above features are critical components of human language, separating our communication system from those of other creatures? Or are we unique in the combination of features that language requires?

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CROSS-SECTIONS OF LANGUAGE

Compositionality allows for language to be made up of units at different levels of form, such as syllables, words, and sentences. Let us now take a look at each of these formal levels, as well as the patterns of social organization found in language.

LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC FORM

At the phonetic level, language can be analyzed as being composed of individual sound segments, including vowels and consonants. The types of sounds and their distinctive features are discussed in detail in the next chapter, The sounds of language. A single change in a sound, such as from the [b] in big to the [p] in pig, can result in a change from one word to another. One of the ways that languages can be distinguished from each other is in how their inventories of distinctive sounds differ.

When individual sounds are combined, they can form a word. A word can also be adjusted by adding a suffix or prefix. For example, the word big has one meaning, but bigger and biggest each have a suffix, namely -er and -est, which add additional information to the base, big. Suffixes can also denote more complex meanings or change a word’s part of speech, that is, whether it is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. For instance, the difference in meaning between concentrate (a verb) and concentration (a noun) is marked by the addition of the suffix -tion. Likewise, prefixes can also change the meanings of words: consider the function of re- in the words redo, rethink, and remix.

Words can also be combined to form larger units—phrases and sentences—at the level of syntax. At this level, we classify words by their parts of speech, such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and distinguish among the functions performed by words within a phrase or sentence. In English, for example, a noun can function as a subject, direct object, or indirect object. This level is discussed in more detail in the third chapter of this book, A brief look at grammar.

Sound segments, words, and grammar are classic levels of analysis when we study any language, but there are yet other levels of form. Intonation, or prosody, is composed of contour patterns of high and low pitches and fast or slow rhythms, which express the speaker’s emotion or attitude toward her listener or the subject of conversation. For example, consider the differences in meaning if a speaker stresses certain words in a sentence of English, as in We have not found any smoking guns, versus We have not found any smoking guns. The first, with stress on found, implies that some clue or piece of evidence might exist, but has not yet been found, while the second, with stress on any, implies that the search was exhaustive and expresses a lack of interest in continuing to look for evidence.

Gesture, or movements of the body that accompany speech, can also be analyzed as a level of linguistic form. Gestures across languages are often similar, as when we point close to or away from the body when talking about something here or there in virtually any language, but gestures can also vary systematically. In English, we talk about past and future events as being behind or in front of us, as in the expressions looking back over the years and looking forward to the weekend. But in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andean mountain range in parts of Bolivia, Peru and Chile, the word nayra means ‘eye, sight, front’ and is used in expressions referring to past events, while the word qhipa ‘back, behind’ is used in reference to future events. Thus, Aymara speakers conceptualize the past as being in front of them and the future as being in back. Their gestures also reflect this; when speaking about the past, monolingual Aymara speakers tend to point to or move their hands toward the front (Núñez and Sweetser 2006).

Other levels of language are also worth considering, such as semantics, the study of the meanings of words and sentences, and discourse, the combination of utterances or sentences in conversation and in writing. At even more abstract levels of language, such as genre, where texts and speech are classified by their function within society, we continue to find systematic structures in how language is put together. For example, in the genre of narrative storytelling, in many cultures, we consistently find a protagonist, antagonist, sources of conflict, one or more climactic events, and resolution of the story after the climax.

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SPEECH COMMUNITIES

“Every speaker,” the eminent American linguist Leonard Bloomfield wrote, “is a mediator between various groups” (Bloomfield 1933/1992:477). Patterns of speech vary along dimensions of social organization. People from different geographic regions may speak different dialects, or local varieties, of the same language.

Though not everyone may agree on how precisely to distinguish whether two varieties of speech are different languages or different dialects, the criterion of mutual intelligibility serves well. Mutual intelligibility is a relative concept that refers to the level of ease or difficulty that two speakers have when communicating with each other, regardless of whether or not they share a common language. One measure of mutual intelligibility could be the proportion of words used in one community that are understandable to speakers in another community. If there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility, the speech varieties could be considered dialects of the same language, as is the case with Scottish, British, American, and Singaporean English. In contrast, where there is little mutual intelligibility, as with English, Chinese, and Swahili, we know we are dealing with separate languages.

Social identity is also an important factor in distinguishing between dialects and languages. For example, Fijian is generally considered to be one language, including by Fijians themselves, although the variety of Fijian spoken by people in eastern Fiji is not mutually intelligible with that spoken in western Fiji (Lynch 1998:26).

Each of the formal levels discussed above has patterns of regularity and variation that can be analyzed. Consider, for instance, how the style of writing for this textbook chapter differs from colloquial speech. How is the language we use in the classroom different from the language we use at home? Likewise, men and women have different manners of speaking. The same goes for speakers within a given community who belong to different generations; you probably speak differently from your parents and grandparents in certain ways. Why? Does it have something to do with establishing an identity, or aligning oneself with other people who are seen as sharing an identity? Remember too that language is a product of social interactions, which likewise follow patterns of social organization. With so many levels of formal and social regularity and variation, language as a whole forms a complex system, or a network of tightly integrated basic elements, which work in concert to produce highly intricate variation. We will devote more time to this in a later chapter, Language variation.

LIFE CYCLES OF LANGUAGE

Languages also have life cycles. We can speak of dead languages like Latin and Sanskrit, living languages like English, Hawaiian, and Japanese, and dying or endangered languages. In certain situations, as for example trade colonies or plantation economies, where speakers of many different languages are intermingled, a new language can be born. This was the case for Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and for Hawaiian Creole English, aka Pidgin, in Hawai‘i . Other chapters in this book, An introduction to pidgins and creoles and Language endangerment, deal with language birth and death, respectively.

THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Linguists, like other scientists, use the scientific method to study and theorize about language. The scientific method is a collaborative process of formulating hypotheses, collecting data, analyzing data, and communicating results. No linguist would be so foolish to claim a full understanding of all of language. Such a vast, complex system can be studied only in cross-sections. By considering the full range of available data, however, we can test whether or not our current theories and assumptions about language are valid.

COLLECTING DATA

There are more than 6,800 languages in the world (Gordon 2005), many of which have barely been studied at all. Even among languages that are well documented, it is often the case that we only have a partial understanding of how a particular language is actually used in certain contexts or by certain groups of speakers.

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Thus, one of the most important types of data collection in linguistics is fieldwork, in which a linguist goes into a community to gather first-hand records of how a language is used. Other forms of data collection in linguistics include taking surveys on the preferences or attitudes toward linguistic patterns held by certain speakers, compiling texts or audio recordings into a corpus or database of examples for natural language, and conducting experiments on language production and comprehension, which may be done in a laboratory, classroom or other environment. Inductive introspection, where linguists create their own data based on their experiences and intuitions as native speakers, can also help to test and formulate hypotheses. Noam Chomsky (1957:15), for instance, famously proposed the example sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. to argue that syntax can be analyzed separately from meaning, since native English speakers are likely to find this sentence somehow grammatically well-formed, even though it makes no sense.

As you go through the rest of the course, pay attention to what kinds of data have been collected so far. As with any science, ask yourself what other data sources might support or challenge the current conclusions. What additional data would you like to see? Are there data that you can supply, from your own experience with language, or that you could collect fairly easily?

ANALYZING DATA

Once data have been gathered, linguists characterize patterns of regularity and variation in how language is used. Theories of language are built on models, or systematic explanations, of how units can combine at each level of formal analysis and in various types of social contexts or situations. Many models represent attempts to reduce the complexity of language to a smaller set of principles or constraints that govern how patterns of regularity arise.

TESTING HYPOTHESES

Based on the principles or constraints that establish a model, linguists then generate hypotheses regarding what types of patterns or behavior will or will not be found, either in a particular language or in all human languages. Where new data fit the hypothesis, the model is supported as a reasonable characterization of language. Where the data contradict the model, it calls for a new analysis, and perhaps a new understanding of how language works. You will see examples of models and hypotheses about language as you move through this course.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE

Several design features discussed above may be unique to human language, including imagination and creativity. There are also highly specific biological traits that contribute to our ability to speak. One of these is that adult humans have a larynx, or voice box, which is lower down in the throat than in other primates. The lowered larynx separates it from other tissues in the mouth and throat, creating a larger vocal tract and facilitating the production of a wider range of vowels and consonants.

Human children are born with mouths and throats that anatomically resemble those of other primates, but as they grow, the larynx and epiglottis become separated from the soft palate (Fletcher and MacWhinney 1996:307). The lowered larynx involves a higher risk of choking while eating, and thus could have been a disadvantage. That it was not has led to speculation that the evolutionary advantage of the lowered larynx must have been its role in enabling oral communication (Fitch 2000). Compare the distance between the epiglottis, which is at the top of the larynx, and the soft palate for human infants shown in figure 2 below.

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FIGURE 2: HUMAN INFANT VOCAL TRACT1

Infant vocal tract: H = hard palate, S = soft palate, T = tongue, J = jaw, E = epiglottis, G = glottis

It is likely that the lowered larynx was present in early hominids around 300,000 years ago (Kay et al. 1998), but clear material evidence for fully developed language dates back to only about 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, when archaeology shows records of symbolic rituals, such as burial of the dead, symbolic artwork such as rock carving and cave paintings, and the use of red clay, or ochre, as tools for drawing or writing (McBrearty and Brooks 2000:526).

Many speculative proposals have been raised about the origins of human language. Some researchers point to the ubiquity of gesture across cultures—and the use of facial and hand gestures by chimpanzees—to argue that gesture must have preceded oral communication and played a seminal role in the emergence of language (Meguerditchian et al. 2010). Other scholars, in contrast, point to the use of stone tools, and especially weapons that could be thrown, to argue that fine motor control of sequential movements gave rise to the capacity to articulate sounds and meaningful units in regular patterns (Calvin 1982). Yet others point to mirror neurons, brain cells that fire both when performing an action and when perceiving another performing the same action, as a “missing link” that enabled the use of symbols that have both meaning and form, and that can be learned through interaction between individual speakers (Rizzolatti and Arbib 1998). Each of these sides argues forcefully for the centrality of certain aspects of language over others as they build a story for how language evolved (for a review of these proposals, see Holden 2004).

A theory of monogenesis assumes that all human languages spoken today have a common origin, a single language that was spoken at some point in the past by a group of early hominids who were the ancestors of all Homo sapiens. Proposals that search for a “missing link” in the evolution of language assume monogenesis. Legendary stories for the origin of language in many cultures also imply monogenesis. It is possible, however, that language emerged through polygenesis, whereby separate groups of early hominids individually developed their own communicative systems, and modern language arose through interactions between these groups (Freedman and Wang 1996). Evidence for polygenesis can be found in the fact that even Neanderthals, who were our evolutionary cousins but not our direct ancestors, practiced ritual burial and the offering of flowers on graves (Solecki 1975). This implies that they had at least enough capacity for imagination—and thus possibly displaced reference—to develop cultural practices involving the remembrance of past friends and family members. Nonetheless, there is no direct evidence for the use of language by Neanderthals.

1 Image from Wikimedia (creative commons license, author: Cengst) after Vihman 1996.

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GLOSSARY

arbitrary random or not clearly motivated

communication a system for transferring signals to influence the behavior of others

complex system a way of defining language, as a network of tightly integrated basic elements, which work in concert to produce intricate variation

continuum a range of related values

corpus a database of examples for natural language, which can include elicited items, texts, and audiovisual recordings

cultural transmission the learning of individual signals and their functions during the course of one’s lifetime

design features characteristics that together make a communication system, including channel, function, exchange, learning, arbitrariness, compositionality, imagination, and creativity

dialects local varieties of a single language, spoken by different speech communities

discourse the combination of utterances or sentences in conversation and writing

displaced reference the use of language to refer to something that is not present

experiment in linguistics, a method of scientific inquiry where a scholar investigates details of language production and comprehension in a laboratory, classroom, or other environment

intonation, prosody contour patterns of high and low pitches and fast or slow rhythms, which express the speaker’s emotion or attitude toward her listener or the subject of conversation

fieldwork a type of data collection in which a linguist goes into a community to gather first-hand records of how a language is used

genre the classification of texts and forms of speech according to their function within society

gesture movements of the body that accompany speech

introspection a method of inquiry where linguistics create their own data based on their experiences and intuitions as native speakers

language the human communicative system

larynx the voice box, which is lower down in the throat for humans as compared to other primates

levels of language the classes of units that combine to form messages, such as sounds, words, sentences, prosody, and gestures

mirror neurons brain cells that fire both when performing an action and when perceiving another who performs the same action

model in science, a systematic explanation for observed phenomena

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monogenesis a theory or model of language evolution, which assumes that all human languages spoken today have a common origin

mutual intelligibility the level of ease or difficulty that two speakers have when communicating with each other, regardless of whether or not they share a common language

part of speech the class of a word according to its function, such as noun, verb, adjective, and adverb

phonetic level the level at which language can be analyzed as being composed of individual sound segments, including vowels and consonants

polygenesis a model of language evolution in opposition to monogenesis; polygenesis assumes that early hominids individually developed their own communicative systems, and that modern languages arose through interactions between these groups

prefix an element attached at the beginning of a word, such as re- in redo, rethink, and remix

productivity the use of novel combinations of existing linguistic forms

referent something that is denoted or pointed to by a symbol

semantics the study of the meanings of words and sentences

suffix an element attached at the end of a word, such as -er and -est in bigger and biggest, as well as -tion in concentration

syntax the classification of words by their parts of speech and analysis of how they work within a phrase or sentence

FURTHER READINGS

Aside from the readings listed in the references section below, there are many other books that give lively and accessible accounts of language. Edward Sapir’s Language: An introduction to the study of speech (1921) covers levels of linguistic form, processes of linguistic change, and the interplay between culture and language. Recent attempts to bridge new findings from neuroscience and cognitive science with models of language include Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities (2002) and Jerome Feldman’s From molecule to metaphor: A neural theory of language (2006).

REFERENCES

Baldwin, Ian T., et al. 2006. Volatile signaling in plant-plant interactions: “Talking trees” in the genomics era. Science 311(5762):812–15.

Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933/1992. Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Calvin, William H. 1982. Did throwing stones shape hominid brain evolution? Ethology and Sociobiology

3(3):115–24. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton. Fitch, William Tecumseh. 2000. The evolution of speech: A comparative review. Trends in Cognitive Sciences

4(7):258–67. Fletcher, Paul and Brian MacWhinney. 1996. Handbook of child language. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Freedman, David A. and William Shi-Yuan Wang. 1996. Language polygenesis: A probabilistic model.

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Anthropological Sciences 104(2):131–38. Frisch, Karl von. 1973. Decoding the language of the bee. Nobel lecture, December 12, 1973. Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, fifteenth edition. Dallas: SIL

International. Hockett, Charles F. 1960. The origins of speech. Scientific American 203: 89–97. Holden, Constance. 2004. The origin of speech. Science 303(5662):1316–19. Kay, Richard F.; Cartmill, Matt; and Michelle Balow. 1998. The hypoglossal canal and the origin of human

vocal behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 95: 5417–5419. Köhler, Wolfgang. 1929. Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright. Kroodsma, Donald E. 2005. The singing life of birds: The art and science of listening to birdsong. New York:

Houghton Mifflin. Lynch, John. 1998. Pacific languages: An introduction. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Maurer, Daphne; Pathman, Thanujeni; and Catherine J. Mondloch. 2006. The shape of boubas: Sound-shape

correspondences in toddlers and adults. Developmental Science 9(3):316–22. McBrearty, Sally and Allison S. Brooks. 2000. The revolution that wasn’t: A new interpretation of the origin of

modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution 39:453–563. Meguerditchian, Adrien; Vauclair, Jacques; and William D. Hopkins. 2010. Captive chimpanzees use their right

hand to communicate with each other: Implications for the origin of the cerebral substrate for language. Cortex 46(1):40–48.

Mercado, Eduardo; Uyeyama, Robert K.; Pack, Adam A.; and Louis M. Herman. 1999. Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin. Animal Cognition 2(1):17–25.

Núñez, Rafael E. and Eve Sweetser. 2006. With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science 30(2006):401–50.

Parry, K. and E. D. Morgan. 1979. Pheromones of ants: A review. Physiological Entomology 4: 161–89. Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. and Edward M. Hubbard. 2001. Synaesthesia: A window into perception, thought

and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(12):3–34. Ristau, Carolyn A. 1983. Language, cognition, and awareness in animals? Annals of the New York Academy of

Sciences 406:170–86. Rizzolatti, Giacomo and Michael Arbib. 1998. Language within our grasp. Trends in Neurosciences 21(5):188–

94. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916/1986. Course in general linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris. New York: Open

Court. Solecki, Ralph S. 1975. Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal flower burial in Northern Iraq. Science 190(4217): 880–81. Taga, Michiko E., and Bonnie L. Bassler. 2003. Chemical communication among bacteria. Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences 100(Suppl 2):14549–54. Terrace, Herbert S. 1979. How Nim Chimpsky changed my mind. Psychology Today 13(6):65–76. Vihman, Marilyn May. 1996. Phonological development: The origins of language in the child. Oxford:

Blackwell.