Module Guides ENC1502 The Study of Language | Page 7

The key here is displacement. Animals can demonstrate communication relating to the things that are in front of them – but what they cannot do is displace those things in time and space, They can talk about the banana they want now, but not about the banana they had yesterday, or the one they had in another zoo. Displacement is just one of the areas in which human language and animal language differ greatly.