Human and Birdster's (Research Paper Sample)

Human and Birdster’s
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Human and Birdster’s
Language is an important aspect of life as it enables communication. Human beings and animals use the tool as a method of passing messages to one another. While there is still a large difference between the way human beings and animals communicate, there are some similarities in the acquisition of language skills. There are also certain differences in the manner animals and humans learn to communicate.
According to Dye (2014), both humans and birds learn to communicate by way of tests. The human babies learn to communicate by observing the response of parents and other humans to the sounds they make. For instance, when a baby makes a sound, he or she observes how the mother reacts to it so that he or she can know whether it is pleasant or not. The child can also know whether the sound is effective or not. It helps him or her in adapting the sounds they make so as to achieve the correct response. The researcher Goldstein (Dye, 2014) observed that male cowbirds learn how to sing by observing the response of the female cowbirds. The females cannot sing, but they are responsible for teaching the males how to sing. Female cowbirds listen to the younger males trying to sing and give nonverbal clues that indicate whether the male is closer to doing the right thing or not.
Human beings and animals acquire language skills by interaction rather than just imitation. Goldstein carried out an experiment to measure the level of language development in infants (Dye, 2014). The results showed that when there was social interaction between a mother and the infant, the language infrastructure developed at a faster rate. When the mother just talked to the infant without responding to any communication the infant made, the learning was markedly lower. It is the same case with cowbirds that do not learn to sing from imitating other males, but from interacting with the females who cannot sing.
The main differences in the way birds and humans acquire language skills are that animal communication is mainly driven by genetics while that of man is driven by learning. Most of the animals are born knowing the communication methods of their species. The communication patterns of these animals remain the same even if they are raised in different environments. For most animals, there are no noticeable accent differences in communication from different geographical regions. This is not the case with human beings as they have to learn methods of communicating. It explains why there are different languages and accents based on different geographical regions. Human beings acquire language skills based on their environment as opposed to animals whose language acquisition is more innate.
Another difference in language acquisition is that humans mainly use sound f...