Representational Systems in Zoosemiotics and Anthroposemiotics Part I: What Have the So-Called “Talking Animals” Taught Us about Human Language?

Vilém Uhlíř

Representational Systems in Zoosemiotics and Anthroposemiotics Part I

What Have the So-Called “Talking Animals” Taught Us about Human Language?

Authors

Vilém Uhlíř Theoretical and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences, Charles University, 12843, Praha 2

Keywords:

language, syntax, representation, meta-representation, zoosemiotics, anthroposemiotics, talking animals, general cognition, representational systems, evolutionary discontinuity, biosemiotics

Abstract

This paper offers a brief critical review of some of the so-called “Talking Animals” projects. The findings from the projects are compared with linguistic data from Homo sapiens and with newer evidence gleaned from experiments on animal syntactic skills. The question concerning what had the so-called “Talking Animals” really done is broken down into two categories – words and (recursive) syntax. The (relative) failure of the animal projects in both categories points mainly to the fact that the core feature of language – hierarchical recursive syntax – is missing in the pseudo-linguistic feats of the animals.