Animal Linguistic Capabilities

"The foxes of the Arctic, scavengers that they were, had picked up some language, but their brains were so formed that they could only understand statements made in the present tense" (576). In His Dark Materials, there are several references, both implied and explicit, to animal linguistic capabilities. At worst, I could just say that I am suffering from misplaced concreteness, and would like to explore the extent to which animals, or daemons, could actually speak to humans. Obviously they can communicate, but I am referring to animals' ability to have a language, in the way that we have a language.

There have been extensive studies conducted on this subject, for obvious reasons of interest. First, there are nine things that characterize language: 1) a mode of communication; 2) semanticity; 3) pragmatic function; 4) interchangeability; 5) cultural transmission; 6) arbitrariness; 7) discreteness; 8) displacement; and 9) productivity. A mode of communication refers to the means by which messages are communicated, usually vocal-auditory, but sometimes visual. Semanticity refers to the meaning of the communication. Pragmatic function refers to the purpose the communication serves, like helping an individual to stay alive. Interchangeability refers to an individuals' ability to both send and receive messages; this is usually the case, but some species can only receive or send, like silkworm moths. Cultural transmission is the need for some aspect of a communication system to be learned through interaction with other individuals, which is always the case for humans, but not the case for all species (e.g. some song birds and chimpanzee signals). Arbitrariness is the property that the names for words are not logically related to their meaning. (For example, the word "dog" does not sound like a dog or represent a dog in any logical way; it is arbitrary.)

Discreteness, displacement, and productivity are the three linguistic characteristics that have so far been found lacking in animal communication systems. Discreteness refers to the property of having complex messages that are built out of smaller parts. The messages in animal communication systems with which we are familiar do not have this property. Instead, each message is an indivisible unit. Displacement is the ability to communicate about things that are not present in space or time. For example, humans can talk about China or the color blue when we are not actually seeing it, and we can discuss what we did last year or what we plan to do next year. No animal communication system appears to display this feature. Last, productivity is the ability to produce and understand an infinite number of messages that have not necessarily been expressed before. For example, if I say "The pink gyrating apple tree is singing bad karaoke on top of my bottle of Jack Daniels," that is most likely a unique sentence that has never been produced before.

However, some animals do have some extremely interesting communication systems. Honey bees, for example, have extremely complex dances that they will do to communicate with the queen and the rest of the bees. For example, they can communicate with various nuances and variations in their dances (i.e varying speed, shape, and body movement), how much food they found, the quality of the food they found, how far away the food is, and in what direction. Also, European robins have extremely varied and complicated songs to mean different things, like "let's build a nest together" or "go get some worms for the babies." However, the birds cannot make up a new song to cope with a new situation. The robin is creative in his ability to sing the same thing in many different ways, but not in its ability to use the same units of the communication system to express many different meanings. Also, crabs and spiders have interesting gestural communication systems involving courtship, territory, and food, but again, they do not fall under the aforementioned parts of language: discreteness, displacement, and productivity. It would seem then that under the lens of misplaced concreteness, daemons would not only not be able to communicate as they do with their humans, but that they wouldn't even be able to communicate as humans do with other individuals of their own species.
(If you are seeking further enlightenment on animal linguistic capabilties, you can visit www.grandin.com/inc/or find a copy of the ninth edition of Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics from Ohio State University, and check out pages 21-37.