Theories on Feline Syntax

By Rom Watson
c. July 8, 2011

If cats ever did learn to speak English, (and I’m not saying they ever will, but if they did), they would learn it from us, their caretakers. Therefore, I could not believe that their syntax would ever be so bad that they would utter the phrase, “I can has cheeseburger.” Sure, their diction wouldn’t be perfect, and they would probably speak with an accent; but “I can has?” Come on, I thought to myself, why would anyone think that a cat’s English would be that stilted?

Then I did some research. My first stop was Wikipedia, to get a broad overview of syntax and word order in relation to second language acquisition. (We must assume that “cat-speak,” or whatever cats use to communicate with each other, is their first language.) I didn’t make a second stop, because the first stop yielded this:

“. . .some errors that second language learners make in their speech originate in their first language. For example, Spanish speakers learning English may say “Is raining” rather than “It is raining”, leaving out the subject of the sentence. French speakers learning English, however, do not usually make the same mistake. This is because sentence subjects can be left out in Spanish, but not in French. This influence of the first language on the second is known as language transfer.”

So, I was wrong. My theories on feline syntax sprang from ignorance of the process of learning a second language. The facts of language transfer indicate that it is not only possible, but even likely that a cat would indeed say, “I can has cheeseburger.”

What does all this mean? It means that, apparently, cats are not as smart as I thought they were.