26.4 Do Other Species Have Language?
Talking hands Human language appears to have evolved from gestured communications (Corballis, 2002, 2003; Pollick & de Waal, 2007). Even today, gestures are naturally associated with spontaneous speech, especially speech that has spatial content. Both gesture and speech communicate, and when they convey the same rather than different information (as they do in baseball’s sign language), we humans understand faster and more accurately (Hostetter, 2011; Kelly et al., 2010). Outfielder William Hoy, the first deaf player to join the major leagues (1892), reportedly helped invent hand signals for “Strike!” “Safe!” (shown here) and “Yerr out!” (Pollard, 1992). Referees in all sports now use invented signs, and fans are fluent in sports sign language.
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26-4 What do we know about other animals’ capacity for language?
Humans have long and proudly proclaimed that language sets us above all other animals. “When we study human language,” asserted Chomsky (1972), “we are approaching what some might call the ‘human essence,’ the qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique [to humans].” Is it true that humans, alone, have language?
Animals display impressive comprehension and communication. Vervet monkeys sound different alarm cries for different predators: a barking call for a leopard, a cough for an eagle, and a chuttering for a snake. Hearing the leopard alarm, other vervets climb the nearest tree. Hearing the eagle alarm, they rush into the bushes. Hearing the snake chutter, they stand up and scan the ground (Byrne, 1991). To indicate threats, monkeys can also combine 6 different calls into a 25-call sequence (Balter, 2010). But is this language? This question launched many studies with chimpanzees.
But is this language? Chimpanzees’ ability to express themselves in American Sign Language (ASL) raises questions about the very nature of language. Here, the trainer is asking, “What is this?” The sign in response is “Baby.” Does the response constitute language?
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For examples of intelligent communication and problem solving among orangutans, elephants, and killer whales, watch LaunchPad’s 6-minute Video: How Intelligent Are Animals? See also Video: Case Studies for a helpful tutorial animation on this type of research method.
In the late 1960s, psychologists Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner (1969) built on chimpanzees’ natural tendencies for gestured communication by teaching sign language to a chimpanzee named Washoe. After four years, Washoe could use 132 signs; by her life’s end in 2007, she was using more than 245 signs (Metzler, 2011; Sanz et al., 1998). One New York Times reporter, having learned sign language from his deaf parents, visited Washoe and exclaimed, “Suddenly I realized I was conversing with a member of another species in my native tongue.” Some chimpanzees strung signs together to form sentences. Washoe, for example, signed “You me go out, please.” Some word combinations seemed creative—saying water bird for “swan” or apple-which-is-orange for “orange” (Patterson, 1978; Rumbaugh, 1977). But some psychologists grew skeptical. Were the chimps language champs or were the researchers chumps? Consider, said the skeptics:
Ape vocabularies and sentences are simple, rather like those of a 2-year-old child. And unlike speaking or signing children, apes gain their limited vocabularies only with great difficulty (Wynne, 2004, 2008).
Chimpanzees can make signs or push buttons in sequence to get a reward. But pigeons, too, can peck a sequence of keys to get grain (Straub et al., 1979). The apes’ signing might be nothing more than aping their trainers’ signs and learning that certain arm movements produce rewards (Terrace, 1979).
Studies of perceptual set show that when information is unclear, we tend to see what we want or expect to see. Interpreting chimpanzee signs as language may be little more than the trainers’ wishful thinking (Terrace, 1979). When Washoe signed water bird, she may have been separately naming water and bird.
“Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange . . .” is a far cry from the exquisite syntax of a 3-year-old (Anderson, 2004; Pinker, 1995).
Controversy can stimulate progress, and in this case, it triggered more evidence of chimpanzees’ abilities to think and communicate. Kanzi, a bonobo with a reported 384-word vocabulary, could understand syntax in spoken English (Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1993, 2009). Kanzi has responded appropriately when asked, “Can you show me the light?” and “Can you bring me the [flash]light?” and “Can you turn the light on?” Given stuffed animals and asked—for the first time—to “make the dog bite the snake,” he put the snake to the dog’s mouth.
Comprehending canine Border collie Rico had a vocabulary of 200 human words. If asked to retrieve a toy with a name he had never heard, Rico would pick out a new toy from a group of familiar items (Kaminski et al., 2004). Hearing that name for the second time four weeks later, Rico more often than not would retrieve the same toy. Another border collie, Chaser, has set an animal record by learning 1022 object names (Pilley & Reid, 2011). Like a 3-year-old child, she can also categorize them by function and shape. She can “fetch a ball” or “fetch a doll.”
Susanne Baus/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom
So, how should we interpret these case studies? Are humans the only language-using species? If by language we mean verbal or signed expression of complex grammar, most psychologists would now agree that humans alone possess language. Humans, alone, also have a version of a gene (FOXP2) that facilitates speech and language development. If we mean, more simply, an ability to communicate through a meaningful sequence of symbols, then apes are indeed capable of language. And other species do exhibit insight, show family loyalty, communicate with one another, care for one another, and transmit cultural patterns across generations. Working out what this means for the moral rights of other animals is an unfinished task.
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ANSWER: These are definitely communications. But if language consists of words and the grammatical rules we use to combine them to communicate meaning, few scientists would label a dog's barking and yipping as language.