Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulat-ing their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. This property isdescribed as productivity (or “creativity” or “open-endedness”) and essentially meansthat the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.The communication systems of other creatures are not like that. Cicadas have foursignals to choose from and vervet monkeys have thirty-six vocal calls. Nor does it seempossible for creatures to produce new signals to communicate novel experiences orevents. The honeybee, normally able to communicate the location of a nectar source toother bees, will fail to do so if the location is really “new.” In one experiment, a hive ofbees was placed at the foot of a radio tower and a food source placed at the top. Tenbees were taken to the top, given a taste of the delicious food, and sent off to tell the restof the hive about their find. The message was conveyed via a bee dance and the wholegang buzzed off to get the free food. They flew around in all directions, but couldn’tlocate the food. (It’s probably one way to make bees really mad.) The problem seems tobe that bee communication has a fixed set of signals for communicating location andthey all relate to horizontal distance. The bee cannot manipulate its communicationsystem to create a “new” message indicating vertical distance. According to Karl vonFigure 2.1Animals and human language 13Frisch, who conducted the experiment, “the bees have no word for up in theirlanguage” and they can’t invent one.This limiting feature of animal communication is described in terms of fixedreference. Each signal in the system is fixed as relating to a particular object oroccasion. Among the vervet monkey’s repertoire, there is one danger signalCHUTTER, which is used when a snake is around, and another RRAUP, used whenan eagle is spotted nearby. These signals are fixed in terms of their reference andcannot be manipulated. What might count as evidence of productivity in the mon-key’s communication system would be an utterance of something like CHUTT-RRAUPwhen a flying creature that looked like a snake came by. Despite a lot of researchinvolving snakes suddenly appearing in the air above them (among other unusualand terrifying experiences), the vervet monkeys didn’t produce a new danger signal.The human, given similar circumstances, is quite capable of creating a “new” signal,after initial surprise perhaps, by saying something never said before, as in Hey! Watchout for that flying snake!
Question
Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulat-ing their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. This property isdescribed as productivity (or “creativity” or “open-endedness”) and essentially meansthat the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.The communication systems of other creatures are not like that. Cicadas have foursignals to choose from and vervet monkeys have thirty-six vocal calls. Nor does it seempossible for creatures to produce new signals to communicate novel experiences orevents. The honeybee, normally able to communicate the location of a nectar source toother bees, will fail to do so if the location is really “new.” In one experiment, a hive ofbees was placed at the foot of a radio tower and a food source placed at the top. Tenbees were taken to the top, given a taste of the delicious food, and sent off to tell the restof the hive about their find. The message was conveyed via a bee dance and the wholegang buzzed off to get the free food. They flew around in all directions, but couldn’tlocate the food. (It’s probably one way to make bees really mad.) The problem seems tobe that bee communication has a fixed set of signals for communicating location andthey all relate to horizontal distance. The bee cannot manipulate its communicationsystem to create a “new” message indicating vertical distance. According to Karl vonFigure 2.1Animals and human language 13Frisch, who conducted the experiment, “the bees have no word for up in theirlanguage” and they can’t invent one.This limiting feature of animal communication is described in terms of fixedreference. Each signal in the system is fixed as relating to a particular object oroccasion. Among the vervet monkey’s repertoire, there is one danger signalCHUTTER, which is used when a snake is around, and another RRAUP, used whenan eagle is spotted nearby. These signals are fixed in terms of their reference andcannot be manipulated. What might count as evidence of productivity in the mon-key’s communication system would be an utterance of something like CHUTT-RRAUPwhen a flying creature that looked like a snake came by. Despite a lot of researchinvolving snakes suddenly appearing in the air above them (among other unusualand terrifying experiences), the vervet monkeys didn’t produce a new danger signal.The human, given similar circumstances, is quite capable of creating a “new” signal,after initial surprise perhaps, by saying something never said before, as in Hey! Watchout for that flying snake!
Solution
The text you provided discusses the concept of productivity in human language, which refers to the ability to create an infinite number of utterances to describe new objects and situations. This is contrasted with the communication systems of other creatures, such as cicadas, vervet monkeys, and bees, which have a fixed number of signals that cannot be manipulated to communicate novel experiences or events.
For example, bees have a fixed set of signals for communicating location, all of which relate to horizontal distance. In an experiment where a food source was placed at the top of a radio tower, the bees were unable to communicate the vertical location of the food source to the rest of the hive. This is because, according to Karl von Frisch who conducted the experiment, "the bees have no word for up in their language" and they can't invent one.
Similarly, vervet monkeys have a fixed set of danger signals, such as CHUTTER for when a snake is around and RRAUP for when an eagle is spotted. These signals cannot be manipulated to create a new signal for a novel threat, such as a flying snake.
In contrast, humans are capable of creating a new signal in response to a novel situation, such as shouting "Hey! Watch out for that flying snake!" This ability to manipulate language to create new expressions and utterances is a unique feature of human communication.
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