ABSTRACT
People who have ‘conversations’ with their pet cats are often parodied or ridiculed, but this ‘talk’ is not so strange as it might at first appear, and in some ways it mirrors human language interaction in the earliest stages. A cat’s owner learns that different sounds are invested with different meanings, for example the sound a hungry cat makes can be quite different to the cry made for attention or to be let outside the house. In much the same way, parents learn to ‘read’ the cries of their new-born children and quickly understand the distinction between a cry of distress and a cry for attention. It has also been known for cats to learn the turn-taking process which characterises conversation. The owner speaks (typically in a warm and comforting way) to the animal, the cat waits for a pause in the proceedings and then contributes a sound. The owner replies and the ‘conversation’ continues. While this is not a very sophisticated piece of communication, it does constitute the transference of sounds and meaning, and animals can keep up this turn taking game for some time. Babies learn to take turns in conversation in much the same way. The child learns to anticipate silence, and their conversational noises then slot into the spaces left by the adult. The noises themselves do not necessarily represent meaning at this stage: gurgles, chuckles and repetitive sounds merely serve to punctuate the conversation taking place, acknowledging the nature of turn taking and maintaining the shared pattern of contribution. Babies soon learn, however, that they are able to use these noises to greater effect, that some noises are more powerful than others and (eventually) that some sounds represent external objects.
