A STUDY OF SIGN LANGUAGE IN ClUMP ANZEES (original) (raw)
Related papers
American Journal of Primatology, 1992
What are chimpanzees telling us about language?
Lingua, 1986
The divergent views expressed in the literature on the linguistic competence of chimpanzees is due in large part to the lack of a common framework in which, to compare human and chimpanzee signing. Working for the most part within a Saussurian semiological framework, several distinct 'tactic' sign types, including: ataxis, lexical parataxis and syntax, are introduced for the purpose of comparison. These types are then illustrated through the ontological development of human signing behavior. Next, the data on the signing behavior of chimpanzees, both wild and captive, are analyzed with the conclusion that, while chimpanzees do show evidence of true semiological communication, their tactic ability does not appear to exceed that of lexical parataxis. This conclusion draws attention to the significance of the difference between syntax and lexical parataxis which in turn tells us something more about the nature of human language.
Recent Use of Signs by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Interactions With Humans
In light of the controversy about the linguistic properties of chimpanzee signing behavior, the recent sign use of 5 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with long histories of sign use was analyzed while they interacted with longtime human companions. Four corpora from 1992 to 1999 consisting of 3,448 sign utterances were examined. The chimpanzees predominantly used object and action signs. There was no evidence for semantic or syntactic structure in combinations of signs. Longer combinations showed repetition and stringing of object and action signs. The chimpanzees mostly signed with an acquisitive motivation. Requests for objects and actions were the predominant communicative intentions of the sign utterances, though naming and answering also occurred. This recent sign use shows multiple differences with (early) human language.
Hand use and gestural communication in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1998
Hand use in gestural communication was examined in 115 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Hand use was measured in subjects while they gestured to food placed out of their reach. The distribution of hand use was examined in relation to sex, age, rearing history, gesture type, and whether the subjects vocalized while gesturing. Overall, significantly more chimpanzees, especially females and adults, gestured with their right than with their left hand. Foods begs were more lateralized to the right hand than pointing, and a greater prevalence of right-hand gesturing was found in subjects who simultaneously vocalized than those who did not. Taken together, these data suggest that referential, intentional communicative behaviors, in the form of gestures, are lateralized to the left hemisphere in chimpanzees.
The Meanings of Chimpanzee Gestures - Hobaiter et al
Chimpanzees' use of gesture was described in the first detailed field study , and natural use of specific gestures has been analyzed . However, it was systematic work with captive groups that revealed compelling evidence that chimpanzees use gestures to communicate in a flexible, goal-oriented, and intentional fashion , replicated across all great ape species in captivity [9-17] and chimpanzees in the wild . All of these aspects overlap with human language but are apparently missing in most animal communication systems, including great ape vocalization, where extensive study has produced meager evidence for intentional use ([20], but see ). Findings about great ape gestures spurred interest in a potential common ancestral origin with components of human language . Of particular interest, given the relevance to language origins, is the question of what chimpanzees intend their gestures to mean; surprisingly, the matter of what the intentional signals are used to achieve has been largely neglected. Here we present the first systematic study of meaning in chimpanzee gestural communication. Individual gestures have specific meanings, independently of signaler identity, and we provide a partial ''lexicon''; flexibility is predominantly in the use of multiple gestures for a specific meaning. We distinguish a range of meanings, from simple requests associated with just a few gestures to broader social negotiation associated with a wider range of gesture types. Access to a range of alternatives may increase communicative subtlety during important social negotiations.
Chimpanzee language research: Status and potential
Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 1978
monkey's innovations of washing sand from potatoes and of using tidal pools to separate, by flotation, wheat from sand, and the transmissions thereof through vectors of social communication have served to tarnish that brass tenet (Azuma, 1973). Now the ape-language projects of the past decade serve to question the conclusion that man alone is capable of language. Language might yet prove to be the eternal bastion for man's egocentric need to define himself as distinctively unique from other animals: He alone normally acquires language, and notably speech, through the normal course of his development. The walls and plaster of the bastion have been seen to shower a bit of dust here and there, however, and to give evidence of perhaps even a crack or two through the course of recent years, for there is mounting evidence that although language per se might be unique to man, not all the requisites thereto are unique to man: Given systematic exposure to nonspeech linguistic alternatives that are marked by "openness," great apes (Pan and Gorilla, notably) have mastered the rudiments of language. The "openness" that characterizes human natural languages stands in marked contrast to all known descriptions of animal communication systems. So far as has been determined, no animal form in its