That growling and barking cannot be called a very highly specialised
language goes without saying; they are, however, so much diversified in
character, according to circumstances, that they place a considerable
number of symbols at an animal's command, and he invariably attaches the
same symbol to the same idea. A cat never purrs when she is angry, nor
spits when she is pleased. When she rubs her head against any one
affectionately it is her symbol for saying that she is very fond of him,
and she expects, and usually finds that it will be understood. If she
sees her mistress raise her hand as though to pretend to strike her, she
knows that it is the symbol her mistress invariably attaches to the idea
of sending her away, and as such she accepts it. Granted that the
symbols in use among the lower animals are fewer and less highly
differentiated than in the case of any known human language, and
therefore that animal language is incomparably less subtle and less
capable of expressing delicate shades of meaning than our own, these
differences are nevertheless only those that exist between highly
developed and inchoate language; they do not involve those that
distinguish language from no language. They are the differences between
the undifferentiated protoplasm of the amoeba and our own complex
organisation; they are not the differences between life and no life. In
animal language as much as in human there is a mind intentionally making
use of a symbol accepted by another mind as invariably attached to a
certain idea, in order to produce that idea in the mind which it is
desired to affect--more briefly, there is a sayer, a sayee, and a
covenanted symbol designedly applied. Our own speech is vertebrated and
articulated by means of nouns, verbs, and the rules of grammar. A dog's
speech is invertebrate, but I do not see how it is possible to deny that
it possesses all the essential elements of language.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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