| Crickets | Bee dancing | Western meadowlark song | Gibbon calls | Signing apes | Alex, a Grey parrot | Paralinguistic phenomena | Human sign languages | Spoken language | |
| Vocal-auditory channel | Auditory, not vocal | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Broadcast transmission and directional reception | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rapid fading (transitoriness) | Yes, repeated | ? | Yes | Yes, repeated | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Interchangeability | Limited | Limited | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Largely yes | Yes | Yes |
| Total feedback | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Specialization | Yes? | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes? | Yes | Yes |
| Semanticity | No? | Yes | In part | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes? | Yes | Yes |
| Arbitrariness | ? | No | If semantic, yes | Yes | Largely yes | Yes | In part | Largely yes | Yes |
| Discreteness | Yes? | No | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Largely no | Yes | Yes |
| Displacement | Yes, always | ? | No | Yes | No | In part | Yes, often | Yes, often | |
| Productivity | No | Yes | ? | No | Debatable | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Traditional transmission | No? | Probably not | ? | ? | Limited | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Duality of patterning | ? | No | ? | No
[Cotton-top tamarin: Yes] |
Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Prevarication | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Reflexiveness | No? | No | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Learnability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |