Lucie Čadková: Lingvistické schopnosti nonhumánních živočichů 1 ABSTRACT The 20th century has witnessed significant advance in our knowledge of animal communication. Thanks to modern technology, ethologists have made great strides in decoding natural communication systems of non-human animals, while psychologist's attempts to teach a member of another species analogues of human language have met with first success. The unexpected findings called into question the unique status of human language capacities and gave rise to pressure to redefine human language in order to defend human uniqueness. One of the most influential definitions by which the communication systems of non-human animals are guaranteed a priori exclusion from the notion of language was developed by Charles F. Hockett in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, his design-feature approach has been used, despite a series of paradigm changes in linguistics and key discoveries in cognitive ethology, in support of the claim that humans are the only living creatures endowed with language. The prevailing uncritical acceptance and usage of his theory in the field of animal communication was the impulse to write this thesis. The dissertation aims to shed light on the historical development of the question of animal linguistic abilities and presents the...