Reimagining Language: Towards a Better Understanding of Language by Including Our Interactions with Non-humans

This essay challenges conventional boundaries of linguistic inquiry by examining language through the lens of human interactions with non-humans—both animals and computers. By bringing together these seemingly disparate domains, we gain fresh insights into fundamental questions about the nature of language itself.

In examining human-animal interactions, we explore how sequence and contingency function as organizing principles for communication across species boundaries. Animals may not possess human language, but their communication systems reveal important aspects of how meaning emerges through interaction.

Simultaneously, our interactions with computers and large language models highlight both the remarkable achievements and limitations of artificial systems in processing and generating language. While these systems can produce linguistically sophisticated outputs, they also reveal the embodied, contextual, and social dimensions of human language that remain challenging to replicate.

By juxtaposing these different forms of cross-boundary communication, this collaborative essay encourages linguists to reconsider conventional assumptions about language and opens new avenues for understanding language as a complex, dynamic phenomenon that extends beyond exclusively human domains.