Complex Language

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 538.

Language is hard to fully define and grasp. We are able to replace complex concepts with sounds that we group together into words. We think using these words and at times we will create new words by mixing existing words to describe a complex concept. Others will understand even our new words simply because they understand how language works.

Animals can be trained to do sign language to communicate their desires. However, they do not actually handle complex language. They have instincts and we train them to connect their instincts to some action. In this case it might be expressing the desire of their instinct with sign language.

Our use of complex, abstract language sets us far apart from the animals. I could tell my son, when he was four years old, to go and get the big, red screwdriver from my workbench in the basement. Even if he had never seen it before, he could easily perform the task because he knew meanings of “go,” “get,” “big,” “red,” “screwdriver,” “workbench,” and “basement.” He could have done the same for a small, brown hammer or a black bucket beside the workbench or any of dozens of other items that he perhaps had never seen before but could visualize when I described them in a few brief words. No chimpanzee in all history has been able to perform such a task—a task that has not been learned through repetition with reward, but is simply described in words that refer to an item that the hearer has never seen before. Yet four-year-old human beings can do this routinely, and we think nothing of it.