Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

The linguistics encyclopedia 14
vov—so some arbitrariness is still involved). An iconic system is more limited than an
arbitrary one, because it can only refer to things and situations that can be imitated.
DF9 Discreteness: the messages a language is able to convey are not arranged along a
continuum, but are discrete of each other. Had they been continuous, the system would
have had to be iconic (compare bee-dancing, described below); a discrete system,
however, can be either iconic or arbitrary.
DF10 Displacement: language can be used to talk about things that are remote in time
and place from the interlocutors. A system without displacement could not be used to talk
about the past or the future, to write fiction, to plan, speculate, or form hypotheses.
DF11 Openness: language allows for the making and interpretation of infinitely many
new messages. Its grammatical patterning allows us to make new messages by blending
old ones, analogizing from old ones, or transforming old ones. Second, in new contexts,
old linguistic forms can take on new meanings, as when hardware was taken over for use
in computer terminology, or as in the case of figurative language use.
DF12 Tradition: the conventions and (at least surface) structure of any one language
are learned rather than inherited.
DF13 Duality of Patterning: every language has a pattern of minimal meaningless
elements (phonemes) which combine with each other to form patterns of meaningful
elements (morphemes). This duality goes right ‘up’ through the system; thus the
morphemes combine with each other to form a further layer of meaningful patterning in
the lexis, items of which form meaningful groups, etc.
DF14 Prevarication: the ability to lie. This feature is crucially dependent on
displacement.
DF15 Reflexiveness: with language, we can communicate about language. In other
words, language can function as its own metalanguage.
DF16 Learnability: a speaker of one human language can learn another.
Armed with this list, we can examine animal communication systems to see whether
or not they possess all or some of the design features listed. In the discussion, I shall
ignore the first three design features, since, as indicated above, they are incidental to
human language.
It is only possible here to provide rough sketches of the communication systems of
two non-human species, the stickleback and the honey bee. The communication systems
of these two species are popular examples among linguists because of their respective
simplicity and complexity.
Further details of the communicative and other behaviour of sticklebacks can be found
in Tinbergen (1972). Male sticklebacks display a composite visual sign in the breeding
season: their eyes go turquoise, their backs go green, and their undersides go bright red.
Each male builds an algae tunnel nest and tries to get pregnant females to lay their eggs
in it. The males are very aggressive towards each other during this time, but friendly
toward pregnant females, who go a silvery grey colour. Tinbergen wished to discover
whether the visual displays influenced the stickleback’s behaviour during the breeding
season, and, if so, to isolate those aspects of the visual display which caused the males to
attack each other but to court the females. As it happened, the male sticklebacks were
kept in tanks on the window ledge of Tinbergen’s laboratory, and he noticed that
whenever the mail van, which was bright red, passed the window the fish became very
agitated and behaved very aggressively. He hypothesized, therefore, that it was the red