Animals can communicate in various ways, using both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. However, whether animals can communicate using a form of language is something which can be debated. In order to decide whether an animal has language abilities, the actual definition of language must first be considered.

“A language is a set of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group communicates.” Bloch and Trager (1942)

This kind of definition would seem to apply to methods of communication in both humans and animals as regardless of the form the language may take, vocal symbols are used by animals in order to communicate with another member of their species, much like humans. However, there are features of human language which must be satisfied before a type of animal communication can be deemed to be similar to human language. There are five main properties of language, language is creative, highly structured , meaningful, referential and communicative. Can an animals communication system satisfy these characteristics?

Take, for example the vervet monkey. This is an animal which has what can be

It is clear that animal communication systems do not occupy some of the important design features of language which human communication shows evidence of. But, if animals do not entirely communicate like humans in terms of design features of the human language can they be taught to acquire it? Research into the acquisition of language by animals has mainly focused on apes and has been conducted over the last fifty years or so. In teaching apes to communicate, researchers focus on using sign language as a form of language due to the fact that apes are in actual fact physiologically unable to create human sounds. Two of the more successful attempts to teach chimps sign language occurred with two apes by the name of Washoe and Sarah. Washoe was acquired by Professor and Mrs Gardner in 1966 and was taught American sign language since she was approximately one year old. This form of sign language meant that Washoe was able to sign for specific words by performing a certain action e.g. putting her finger on top of her tongue to signify ‘sweet’. Washoe was constantly surrounded by humans who communicated to her through sign language only, thus Washoe developed her skills quite naturally with no formal training. In her acquisition of language, Washoe developed language skills that have not been widely seen in animal communication systems thus far.

Washoe could also refer to items which may differ slightly by using the same word e.g. a key will be the same as a bunch of keys. This shows Washoe was able to extend her ability to generalise and be more associative in her language, a characteristics of human language development in infants. Possibly one of the most interesting aspects of Washoe’s language ability was her ability to creatively create two to three word sentences to convey what she wanted. Washoe’s ability to create basic sentences such as ‘ more tickle’ or ‘open food drink’ (open the fridge) shows creativity that is not entirely evident in animal communication systems. Her grasp of sign language allowed her to be able to communicate with researchers, however as expected Washoe has limited grammatical structure to her language. Unlike a human infants developed ability to understand sentence structure and basic grammar, Washoe’s sentences had no apparent constant structure and instead seemed to be given in no apparent order. This could be due to Washoe signing words instead of speaking them, it could be easier to maintain a constant structure if Washoe was able to communicate vocally.

One of the main skills which Washoe developed was her ability to apply meaning to an object or place by using a word to represent it. Although this kind of ability was present in the vervet monkey’s alarm call system, the purpose of the action was quite different in both cases. The vervet monkey’s applied meaning to a predator and had a call to indicate it’s presence to warn others of danger. Washoe, however was able to applying meaning to an object by signing it’s name even if the ob

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