Much of the work of Linguists is to establish what makes human language unique. Comparisons are often made between human speech and other forms of animal communication, such as studies regarding the ways that monkeys communicate with one another.
In 1960, the Linguist Charles F. Hockett proposed that there were attributes of human language that made human language stand apart from other forms of animal communication. These attributes began to be referred to as “Hockett’s Design Features“.
One such feature was called “Displacement”. Displacement was a way of describing the fact that humans can converse about objects that are either not present amongst those speaking, or could exist in the future. Displacement even describes the way that humans can discuss objects that don’t exist at all, or are imaginary.
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