Communication processes may be deli

Communication processes may be delimited so that they represent an entire
receiver or an entire sender, or processes may be viewed as being much smaller, so
that many of these smaller processes together constitute the processing capability
of an individual. If the most natural form of a hierarchy is with a large number
of small processes, it may be easiest for an organism to learn the details of each
smaller function instead of learning the nature of a single, large function. On the
other hand, in some cases it may be beneficial to define a process larger than a
single individual, with, for example, a group of people producing a document, or
an individual reading a document, including the document and its production, in a single large process.
There are a number of processes that occur frequently in higher level species,
including a number of components to natural language processing, such as the
movement of vocal cords, the reception of sound and its translation into neural
signals, syntactic processing, and phonological processing. Hockett has suggested
that there are at least 13 different features (and thus functions) in human communication
[Hau96, p. 47]. No other species has all 13 features, although many
species have several. These may serve as a basis for an understanding of the human
processes in natural language communication hierarchies.