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human language is about diversity

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but many things are similar

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basic questions of human languages and linguistics

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what is language?

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do animals have language?

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how many languages are there?

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how do we count languages?

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how are they related to each other?

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what do linguists do?

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how do they get their data?

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what are informants?

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do animals have a language as well

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they do communicate

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differences between animal and human communication

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lack of conversation-level communication

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humans clearly have more signs than apes or cats

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three dimensions in which human and animal communication are different

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1. discrete infinity

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discrete means in this sense limited

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English alphabet has 26 letters

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with these letters you can make an infinite number of sentences

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this is provable since you can always add to the longest sentence

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apes also have a discrete set of calls

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but they cannot combine them to make more and more complicated systems

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they only have a limited number of combinations

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2. displacement

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we can talk about our here and now, but also about the past, future, places far away, and abstract notions which we could never see

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animals don't have this

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although bees can communicate about space through a kind of dance, but it is very limited

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they can only talk about honey they have actually experienced, not abstract honey

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3. joint attention

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shared intentionality

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humans work together as a team

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we have to read each others minds in order to know our goals, so that we can help that person achieve that goal

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animals do not do this very well

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apes can look at the same thing and even be aware that they are looking at the same thing

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but they don't work together in a complicated way in which humans can