How do humans differ from animals? - Part 3: Language
Channel: Shooter__Andy
Date: 2015-03-04

In this series I examine the list of the supposed differences between humans and non-human animals produced by Christian apologist Rice Broocks in chapter 6 of his book "God's Not Dead".

This part analyzes the claim that the use of language is a uniquely human trait.

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*Inspired by:*
An Atheist Reads God's Not Dead - Chapter 6 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3j-xzDNj6E) by Steve Shives

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*Sources:*

Brief note on sources for this part: since Broocks used a position of one linguist, Noam Chomsky, as his only piece of evidence, and since there is no currently-held consensus, I will be linking just basic starting points for the study. In other words, Wikipedia articles ahoy! They have links if you are curious to see the sources of their claims.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar

[3] - Chomsky, N. (2004). Language and Mind: Current thoughts on ancient problems. Part I & Part II. In Lyle Jenkins (ed.), Variation and Universals in Biolinguistics. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 379-405.

Chomsky, N. (2005). "Three factors in language design". Linguistic Inquiry 36 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1162/0024389052993655.

[4] - http://books.google.ru/books?id=Pob9S2Nm77kC&lpg=PP1&hl=ru&pg=PA255#v=onepage&q&f=false

[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird#Vocalizations_and_mimicry

[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

[7] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features

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*Additional links:*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language

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Music: "Hyperfun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Background: Loop 116 - Orange Elements (movietools.info)