How is human language different from animal communication?
Animals have ways of transmitting information — communication systems, some of them conscious. These often involve multiple channels, as with humans: visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory. Linguists definitions of language often narrowly focus on speech and hearing, sound systems o Too narrowly, considering what we have learned about signed language in the last few decades. One definition of language: 1) a set of discrete vocal sounds, 2) each of which is arbitrary (i.e. meaningless by itself), 3) which are productive (i.e. can combine in many ways to produce larger units), 4) each of which may have conventional (=agreed-upon) meanings, 5) and which allows its users to communicate about events that are distant in time or space. ⇨ Substitute gestures for vocal sounds in (1), and its adequate for signed languages as well. Language differs from other communicative systems because its signs are symbolic, o I.e., 2nd-order intentionality or reflective meaning: we can monitor our monitor
