Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This TikTok series follows a dog named Bunny, who has been given access to numerous one-word buttons. Bunny is going through a language acquisition phase, similar to that of human toddlers, and uses these buttons to communicate with the humans in the house. Although animals recognize commands, through label learning, language acquisition in animals has not been fully studied. It is especially difficult to discern if animals understand language when such language is often accompanied by other visual cues. Bunny proves asks "the question whether canine communicative skills differ from those of young children in degree only or more substantially", an aspect of language acquisition yet to be fully studied. Language learning in Dogs- Susanne Grassmann, University of Zurich