Language is a complex form of communication involving the transfer of information encoded in specific ways, such as speech, facial expressions, posture, and the like. Despite previous claims that language is unique to humans, it is not. The waggle dance of a worker bee on its return to the hive communicates information on the direction, distance, and nature of a food resource (Chapter 45). Vervet monkeys use warning vocalizations to specify the identity of a potential predator: They have one call for “leopard,” for example, and another for “snake.” But nonhuman animal languages are limited. Attempts to teach even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, to communicate using sign language have met with only limited success (Fig. 24.19).

Grammar provides a set of rules that allow the combination of words into a virtually infinite array of meanings. Noam Chomsky, father of modern linguistics, has pointed out that all human languages are basically similar from a grammatical viewpoint. Humans have what he has called a “universal grammar” that would lead a visiting linguist from another planet to conclude that all Earth’s languages are dialects of the same basic language. That universal grammar is in some way hard wired into the human brain in such a way that every human infant spontaneously strives to acquire language. The specific attributes of the language depend on the baby’s environment—a baby in France will learn French, and one in Japan will learn Japanese—but the basic process is similar in every case. Chimpanzees, and the entire natural world, lack the drive toward the acquisition of a grammatical language.