Animals to communicate with humans use animal language.
The animal language is a modified version of early human
language itself only that animals lack complexity and are less
expressive. Great ape language is a means to communicate among
apes such as bonobos, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas.
Humans communicate with these animals using sign language,
lexigrams, yerkish and physical tokens. Jacques Vauclair,
Francine Patterson and David Premack are well-known researchers
in great ape language.
Humans have used sign language since a very long time. One of
the important sign language used by humans is American Sign
Language. Animals also use signs to express their feelings and
for communication sake. Vocabulary words have been taken from
American Sign Language to communicate with the apes. Lexigrams
are symbols, which represent something. The symbols are laid
down on a flat board called the lexigram board. The lexigram
board has three panels with three hundred and eighty four keys.
These boards are especially used to communicate with chimpanzees
and bonobos. Yerkish also involves keyboard with punch keys,
which have the lexigram symbols. It is actually an artificial
language. Computer keyboards are also used to aid animals as
most of them can be easily trained for keyboard operation.
Plastic tokens are also used for communication with apes. The
apes select a specific token when they want to communicate
something. The animal is given training to select the right
token. Tokens have symbols or pictures. Not all the apes learn
this method of communication properly. During the training, the
animal is made to learn by rewarding them upon an achievement.
Although animals lack vocal cords and speech organs like humans,
some animals have vocals of their own. Wild apes are known to
talk to each other to make the other aware of a possible danger.
Animal language does not have discreteness like human languages.
In human languages, discrete units are combined together to make
a new word with a meaning. So signs or sounds, in animal
language, cannot be combined to form another sign or sound,
which means something. But researchers have proved it that the
animal language does meet certain requirements. But the validity
is still disputed upon by many and that is the reason why animal
language hasn't been given the status of a true language.
People have questioned the practice of great ape language. The
researchers try to understand whether the usage of this language
aid the animals to solve the problem better. Also, whether the
teaching experiences with a primate can be of use when human
children are taught. This is because, there is without doubt a
difference in the ability of the animal and a human, while they
may be similar at some level. Some say that the apes do not
actually understand the language, but instead do a clever trick
to get a reward. Also some researches say that the signed
gesture do not make a grammatically right sentence. The
arbitrariness is sometimes missing, that is, there is no clear
relationship between the signs or sounds.
Many animals have behaviors, which is similar what we speak.
They can understand the language, they can also use it to
reflect their thoughts and communicate with a human. Other than
primates, animals such as sea lions and dolphins also use sign
language and vocals to communicate with human.