المرجع الالكتروني للمعلوماتية
المرجع الألكتروني للمعلوماتية

English Language
عدد المواضيع في هذا القسم 6109 موضوعاً
Grammar
Linguistics
Reading Comprehension

Untitled Document
أبحث عن شيء أخر

النحت النهري
11-5-2016
عاكس ناقصي ellipsoidal reflector
15-1-2019
Elastic Ligament—Ligamentum Nuchae
9-1-2017
المعراج
11-10-2014
يوم يقوم الاشهاد - يومَ يقوم الروحُ والملائكة صفاً
17-12-2015
حرمة تغطية الراس على الرجل حالة الإحرام اختيار.
27-4-2016

Displacement  
  
339   03:31 مساءً   date: 7-1-2022
Author : George Yule
Book or Source : The study of language
Page and Part : 2-11


Read More
Date: 2024-01-11 260
Date: 2024-01-25 417
Date: 8-3-2022 519

Displacement

When your pet cat comes home and stands at your feet calling meow, you are likely to understand this message as relating to that immediate time and place. If you ask your Animals and human language 11 cat where it has been and what it was up to, you’ll probably get the same meow response. Animal communication seems to be designed exclusively for this moment, here and now. It cannot effectively be used to relate events that are far removed in time and place. When your dog says GRRR, it means GRRR, right now, because dogs don’t seem to be capable of communicating GRRR, last night, over in the park. In contrast, human language users are normally capable of producing messages equivalent to GRRR, last night, over in the park, and then going on to say In fact, I’ll be going back tomorrow for some more. Humans can refer to past and future time. This property of human language is called displacement. It allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment. Indeed, displacement allows us to talk about things and places (e.g. angels, fairies, Santa Claus, Superman, heaven, hell) whose existence we cannot even be sure of. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property.

We could look at bee communication as a small exception because it seems to have some version of displacement. For example, when a honeybee finds a source of nectar and returns to the beehive, it can perform a complex dance routine to communicate to the other bees the location of this nectar. Depending on the type of dance (round dance for nearby and tail-wagging dance, with variable tempo, for further away and how far), the other bees can work out where this newly discovered feast can be found. Doesn’t this ability of the bee to indicate a location some distance away mean that bee communication has at least some degree of displacement as a feature? Yes, but it is displacement of a very limited type. It just doesn’t have the range of possibilities found in human language. Certainly, the bee can direct other bees to a food source. However, it must be the most recent food source. It cannot be that delicious rose bush on the other side of town that we visited last weekend, nor can it be, as far as we know, possible future nectar in bee heaven.