ACCTG 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Kanzi, Bonobo, Vocal Folds
Document Summary
The human language possesses many attributes such as: displacement, arbitrariness, productivity, cultural transmission, discreteness, duality. Displacement is the property of human language that allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immediate moment. Animal communication is designed for the immediate place and time (here and now) but. Humans can use language to refer to the past, present and future e. g. last night, now, next week. We can even talk about things and places whose existence we cannot be sure of. e. g. angels, fairies, superman, santa claus, etc. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property. Arbitrariness is the absence of any natural or necessary connection between a word"s meaning and its sound or form. arbitrariness is one of the characteristics shared between all languages. This type of property is called arbitrariness of human language. although majority of the words are arbitrary, still there are some words that are less arbitrary.
