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Is Language a Uniquely Human Activity?Different Psychological Theories about the Acquisition of Language
Although most psychologists nowadays believe language to be unique to humans, others dispute the fact, claiming that there are no differences between animals and humans.
Descartes claimed that language is the unique possession of human beings and that thinking is an innate ability that separates humanity from the animal realm. His most famous motto, “Cogito ergo sum”, meaning “I think therefore I am”, applies to the fact that we have the ability and predisposition to think, and for thinking to occur, language is necessary. Animals, on the other hand, being deprived of language cannot think and are nothing but well-constructed, complex machines, according to the French philosopher. Descartes proposed a dualistic division between the outside objective world and the inner subjective world. It is important to note that his discoveries occurred in a pre-Darwinian era, where humans were not essentially seen as part of nature, but had been often described as hovering between the animal kingdom and the kingdom of God; their body linked them to the physical world, while their rational mind connected them to the spiritual realm. The Radical Behaviorists Reject the Cartesian ViewOne of the staunch opponents of this theory is the radical behaviorist B. F. Skinner who claims that humans are simply products of the environment; that they are on a par with animals, confirming the “Null Hypothesis” that there is no tangible difference between humans and animals. As a result, by closely studying animals one would gain practical insights into human nature. The behavioral theorists claim that language is nothing but learned verbal behavior which reduces the value of language to randomly selected, inherently meaningless sounds, steadily reinforced by the verbal community, i.e. human society. As such, language, in particular speech, is a conditioned response to the environment. Skinner believed humans not to be natively endowed with innate specific structures for language. By attempting to eliminate a human specific ability, Skinner claimed that there would be practically no discriminative element between animals and humans. People all follow the same impulses, learn through operant conditioning, through stimulus, response and reinforcement, and there is no subjective “rational” world that Descartes had proclaimed. Chomsky Criticizes Skinner’s Verbal Behavior TheoryIn more recent psychology, the linguist Noam Chomsky, has strongly defended the Cartesian model and attacks Skinner’s claims about verbal behavior. Chomsky states that language is an innate human ability; where Descartes claimed that the ability to think comes before language, Chomsky had a more nativist position that language itself, not only the ability to think, is a trait that is specific to the human species, as Thomas Hardy Leahey points out in A History of Psychology. According to Chomsky we are naturally programmed or predisposed towards language, and this “universal inner language” was dubbed “mentalese” by his student Jerry Fodor. Language in the Modern Age of Computers and Computer ProgrammingThe modern perception about language seems to favor Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics over Skinner’s “verbal behavior”. Particularly in the modern computer era, cognitive science has gained more prestige and nowadays humans are aligned with language-using computers instead of non-language using animals, according to Thomas Hardy Leahey. But the questions still abound: Would artificial intelligence one day be able to use language as humans do, could higher primate animals acquire language, as theorists like Duane Rumbaugh claim a definite possibility, or is language a uniquely human domain? Sources Hardy Leahey, Thomas. A History of Psychology: Main Currents in Psychological Thought. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997.
The copyright of the article Is Language a Uniquely Human Activity? in Cognitive Psychology is owned by Arash Farzaneh. Permission to republish Is Language a Uniquely Human Activity? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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