can people please stop turning furry worlds into fantastical racism/making up furry stereotypes. i do not want to read 'all cats are troublemakers. all bears are police. all rabbits are caregivers.' like, peoples features and bodies do not signify anything about personality, morality, political stance, etc. and the bioessentialism inherent to that concept absolutely reeks. this is not a politically neutral thing jsjfbvj

Regarding dragons and language. Dolphins and whales seem to have their own vocal language, they even have dialects (orcas for example). So from my research, I would not agree that no other animal on the planet has vocal language (and most animals have some sort of language code, e.g. body language of snakes). It is thus possible for dragons to have language. And more complex dragon's own language, more likely is he to understand human language. Night furies may have vocal language-night=novisual

From this post. 

Hello hello! :)

All animals have communication, and there are some creatures that have complex communication abilities. Some creatures, such as bonobos, have even learned how to use several hundred signs of American Sign Language and have taught that to their offspring. Dolphins and whales are, as you have pointed out, other creatures that have extremely fascinatingly complex communicative abilities, and while I have not studied them to the depth you may have, I am not speaking from a single, isolated source about animals not having language. I am speaking as a linguist who, within the whole body of linguistics, universally agrees that humankind is the only species that has a language. Even with the case of bonobos who are using ASL - a language that humans themselves use - this is not classified as an animal using language to its full definition. The first day of every Introduction to Linguistics course I have taught at a major university, I have begun with the textbook and all the other instructors defining language to the students and demonstrating how humans are the only species on this planet proven to have language. This is fact.

You may have already read this post, but I’m going to bring it up again because it gives the definition of language and some of the essential features that language has. It also talks about how animals fail that list of features. I’m actually going to write some more and expand upon that post because I didn’t list all the features a communication system has to have in order to be officially scientifically classified as a language by a linguist. These are often called the design features of language.

Mode of communication: There is some means of transmitting and receiving messages. The mode of communication may be sound, such as in spoken language, or it may be something like gesture, as in the case of sign languages.

Semanticity: All signals of communication have a meaning or function. There is no signal that lacks meaning.

Pragmatic function: The communication system must serve some useful purpose. (Note that, for #1-3, all communication systems have these features, even communication systems that are not defined as language).

Interchangeabililty: A user can both transmit and receive messages. For instance, I can both talk to give people messages through language, and I can listen to others talk to receive messages through language.

Cultural transmission: There is some aspect of the communication system that is learned from other users. This is one reason why humans have different dialects and languages - we humans have an innate ability to learn language and parse meaning, but we learn different languages because different cultures have their own system of meaning and communication. It’s different in different regions.

Arbitrariness: There is no necessary connection between the form (sound/gesture) of the signal and its meaning. The symbol that is used to convey the meaning is completely arbitrary and it’s just that the social group has connected that arbitrary symbol to its collectively agreed upon meaning. The word “dog” doesn’t have to mean a furry four footed canine creature. We could have used the sounds in “dog” to mean a beanbag chair or a table or a wall or anything else. There’s nothing inherent within the sound “dog” that gives it its meaning.

Discreteness: Large, complex messages can be broken into smaller, discrete parts. Language is created through a bunch of discrete units which are put together to create words and meaning, and there are structured patterns and rules used to connect sound units together into words and words into new words and words into sentences. For instance, in English, we have a limited number of sound units that are used to create words. I can connect the sound “d” next to the vowel in “o” next to the vowel in “g” to create a meaningful word “dog.” The sound “d” itself isn’t meaningful, but it’s a discrete unit which can appear in a variety of words like a building block to create meaningful words. Words themselves are meaningful units that can be arranged together by very complex grammatical rules to create meaningful utterances.

Displacement: This is the ability to discuss information that extends beyond the here and now - that is, being able to talk about things in other times and places other than the present location. As someone who uses language, I can talk about extremely abstract concepts like “peace” that don’t have a time or place; I can talk about the conquest of Alexander the Great which took place thousands of years ago and thousands of miles from where I live; I can talk about hypotheticals in the future about what might happen on the planet Neptune. I don’t just have to communicate about the things in my current situation and my current room. I’m not limited to the here and now with my language.

Productivity / Recursivity: This is the ability to create an infinite number of novel utterances from the structural units in language. Every day, new sentences that no one has ever uttered before… are being uttered… and listeners understand them. “I have five hundred purple hairy coconuts and I’m shipping them to the unicorns in Utah” is probably something no human being has ever said before me, but lo and behold, other English speakers know what I’m saying! It’s pretty awesome. 

Every single human language fulfills every single one of these nine parameters. That’s why these are considered necessary features of language. If one of these features is absent, the reason why it is not language is because it’s something a human could do to communicate, but it doesn’t fall under the language category. For instance, I can give some impromptu gestures. I can point to things and gesture for someone to get out of the way, for instance. #1-3 are fulfilled because there is meaning to my gestures, they serve a purpose, and I’m using the mode of hand motions to convey my message. I also have a little bit of cultural things going for me, since different cultures point differently; because I am from the USA, I use my pointer finger to point. So #5 is met. #4 is also met because some other human could gesture with their hands, too. But then we run into problems. #6. This gesturing isn’t that arbitrary. I’m pointing at you - that’s no arbitrary message, but a concrete demonstration of the actual thing. There’s nothing arbitrary about you meaning you. And even if #6 passed somehow, what about #8? I can’t get a full meaning across with impromptu gestures about something outside of this current time and location. So even though I can communicate with impromptu gestures, it’s not language, and I think people would intuitively agree with me. And this list of features indeed demonstrates how my hand waving isn’t language.

So that’s why the list is what it is. Then we can take this list and compare it to other animal communication systems. Again, some animal communication systems are extremely complex. It’s also to note that every single creature which communicates might demonstrate some of these nine features. All animals fulfill #1-3 in their communication system, for instance. Some animals might even get up to most of the features on this list. The bonobos like Kanzi who use freaking ASL signs hit almost every single feature on this list. Where we start to fail is #8 and #9. The primates who “learn” human language never learn human language in full, and this gives us nice, full, concrete proof that humans are the only species with full language. Primates tend to have fairly limited utterances - sentences rarely exceed three signs. Recursivity and productivity thus isn’t fully met. With real linguistic productivity, I can keep on tacking on more and more onto sentences without limit - “The cat saw the rat who saw the mouse who saw the eagle who saw the…” But bonobos aren’t doing that. And then you don’t really see primates using signs to discuss anything outside of the here and now. They’re using ASL as a complex means of communication to talk about present situation, but aren’t extending to things way in the past or way in the present or way far away outside of their current existential sphere.

Now it is very much the case that dolphin communication is complex and has a whole lot of language-like features. It hits a lot of bullets on this list. You point out something really awesome about dolphin communication - it fulfills #4, cultural transmission. The fact that there are different “dialects” means that there is a part of communication which is taught from one generation to the next, rather than just innately developed and universally communicated. Dolphins in different areas are going to communicate differently based upon that parameter of cultural transmission. The reason why people don’t say dolphin communication is a language, though, is because not every single point on this bullet list can be proven from research.

I’m not a marine biologist and I’m not going to pretend to be one, so I decided to pull up some other information from marine biologists to confirm the statements I as a linguist have been teaching in the classroom. I feel like this article/podcast from The Dolphin Project does a good job of defining human language and its features, and then going through and explaining why dolphins do not have language. It appears that there is no reason to believe right now that dolphins can communicate abstract concepts, the past, or the future, which means they fail #8 displacement. They also don’t appear to have an incredibly structured grammar system of combining smaller units into larger units through designated rules to create an infinite number of meaningful utterances. So #7, and perhaps even #9, also does not pass the test.

The one thing I don’t like about that article is that it’s outdated. (I could also complain I guess that it relies a bit on universalists like Pinker and Chomsky, who are controversial in the linguistics field for reasons I won’t get into). This podcast is almost ten years old now - yikes! - and as I’m sure you know, that’s an uber long time in research. So, just to make us feel more assured about this status on dolphin communication, I looked through some other statements from organizations. The Dolphin Research Center in Florida has stated on their page, “For many years, researchers have looked for evidence of a dolphin language, a way to share complicated information such as stories, family histories, and philosophy in the way that humans do. Although a few dolphins have learned to use a simple artificial language consisting of hand gestures or computer-generated whistles, extensive research to date has failed to demonstrate a natural language in dolphins.”

I also decided to peep into research articles to get the latest and greatest straight from the researchers themselves. This baby, written in 2016 (and open for us to read!), is really fun for me as a phonetician, in which researchers found some evidence for there to be discrete auditory units in dolphin communication. It’s not from some top research journal or anything, which is good to keep in mind, but it’s still right up the alley of what we are interested in, and it’s quite new research. The research means dolphins could pass #7 with structural units in their communication system! The article also nicely goes through the design features of language and discusses to what extent the dolphins meet these features. This author is very optimistic and argues dolphins meet all of them, but also admits that this is dolphin hypothetical language they’re researching - it still isn’t proven that dolphins have language. There’s a reason the authors call it hypothetical throughout the article. I’ll also admit that I feel their arguments about indirect proof of things like displacement is a little weak and rose-tinted. So I can completely see from where you are coming, and this latest research does give us optimism and curiosity about dolphin hypothetical language, but I am still speaking myself from what has been proven and not proven. It has not yet been proven dolphins use language, and if we cannot prove discreteness, displacement, or productivity can be used in full, then it is best not to claim dolphins have language. All prior research has not given that proof yet, and we can’t be assured that that proof will ever come.

Now, I freely admit I don’t know all of what your research has entailed regarding dolphins, whales, and systems of communication. I have no doubt that you are far, far more of an expert on the field that I am, and maybe have stumbled onto new and exciting information! It would be fun and interesting to learn about and I’m curious to learn more. What’s so important and awesome about research is the ability for us to share what we have found and learned with one another. By spreading this information, we can gain a better scientific understanding of the world around us, learn freakishly awesome things, get a better understanding of our field and the others around us, correct mistakes that may have been falsely believed in a field, and apply this new information to new research and development. It is important that I speak to individuals like yourself who have done this research so that I can continue speaking with understanding from my own professional field of linguistics.

I do unwaveringly believe though that I am not spreading any false information about animal communication and the status of language. It is taught widespread throughout the field of linguistics in major universities printed in major textbooks that humans are the only proven creatures with language based upon these parameters. I, my colleagues, my mentors, my colleague’s colleagues, and my mentor’s mentors all agree upon this information. Humans are the only creatures with language is the official stance of the body of contemporary linguistics researchers. It appears as though marine biology research corroborates this, as researchers have with much curiosity and thoroughness examined whether or not creatures like dolphins utilize language and have found that they do not. But maybe we’ll learn something new that’ll change our position? Hard to say until it’s discovered, but new discoveries are always exciting!

I have said in other posts with teasing love that this is a No Argue Topic because of all the research that has been done confirming humans are the only terrestrial species meeting all the parameters of language. I hope that going through this information again and explaining it in other words helps clarify how and why other animals, though they may have awesome and complicated communication systems, do not have language. They don’t and research shows how they’re different from humans. Animals - and even plants - have a different form of communication than our species; and some communication systems hit almost all the design features of language; but it has not been demonstrated that anything except humans have all design features.

In other posts I have talked about how dragons demonstrate communication abilities, but they seem to lack some features from this list. For instance, there appears to be no evidence for dragons beating #8, displacement, communicating information about other times and locations (displacement is one that doesn’t pass a lot in communication systems, tbh). I also as a phonetician can assure people that dragons fail #7, discreteness. There is no limited number of sound units like “d” and “g” and “k” that combine to create meaningful words. There are not words that combine together to create grammatically formed sentences. I know I could pull out the software that phoneticians use in research, plug the Night Fury sound through it, and demonstrate through the shape of the sound file that there are no discrete sound units within the data. This does mean that the dragons in the DreamWorks Dragons HTTYD universe definitely do not have a language. But complex system of communication? Sure, I’d be totally fine with that!