Chimpanzee language research: Status and potential (original) (raw)
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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.
A threat to man's uniqueness? Language and communication in the chimpanzee
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1979
The possibility of talking chimpanzees has greatly aroused the public interest and provoked controversy among the lay public and scientists alike. Why has there been such a furor? Premack and Rumbaugh, and Pribram in his foreword to the Rumbaugh book, all point to man's concept of himself as radically different from all other creatures, as unique. They emphasize Cartesian dualism as the basis for this uniqueness and point
Language in child, chimp, and gorilla
American Psychologist, 1987
Recent successes teaching chimpanzees to engage in symbolic communication have again brought into question the Cartesian supposition that language is uniquely possessed by homo sapiens. Despite the very remarkable achievements of Washoe and Sarah, an objective comparison of these chimps' linguistic performances with those of a typical 3-year-old child provides scant evidence for rejecting Descartes' view. An organism uses human language if and only if it uses structures characteristic of those languages. The ability of apes or even 2-yearolds to communicate and use simple names is not sufficient reason to attribute the use of human language to them. The creative or projective aspect of human language cannot be overlooked. Efforts to explain the language deficits of apes in terms of impoverished language experience, anatomical deficits, or cognitive-structure differences are not convincing.
The emergence of a new paradigm in ape language research
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2002
In recent years we have seen a dramatic shift, in several different areas of communication studies, from an information-theoretic to a dynamic systems paradigm. In an information processing system, communication, whether between cells, mammals, apes, or humans, is said to occur when one organism encodes information into a signal that is transmitted to another organism that decodes the signal. In a dynamic system, all of the elements are continuously interacting with and changing in respect to one another, and an aggregate pattern emerges from this mutual co-action. Whereas the information-processing paradigm looks at communication as a linear, binary sequence of events, the dynamic systems paradigm looks at the relation between behaviors and how the whole configuration changes over time.One of the most dramatic examples of the significance of shifting from an information processing to a dynamic systems paradigm can be found in the debate over the interpretation of recent advances in...
Human Uniqueness in the Age of Ape Language Research
Society & Animals, 2010
This paper summarizes the debate on human uniqueness launched by Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. In the progress of this debate, Noam Chomsky’s introduction of the Language-Acquisition Device (LAD) in the mid-1960s marked a turn to the machine model of mind that seeks human uniqueness in uniquely human components of neural circuitry. A subsequent divergence from the machine model can be traced in the short history of ape language research (ALR). In the past fifty years, the focus of ALR has shifted from the search for behavioral evidence of syntax in the minds of individual apes to participant-observation of coregulated interactions between humans and nonhuman apes. Rejecting the computational machine model of mind, the laboratory methodologies of ALR scientists Tetsuro Matsuzawa and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh represent a worldview coherent with Darwin’s continuity hypothesis.
The various modes of meaningful informational exchange exhibited by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), from the very basic to the complex, are surveyed in comparison to humans, and hypothesized for extinct hominins. Signaling by facial expressions, body language and manual gestures are demonstrated for message transmission, whereas iconographic mark-making and miming are described as more advanced means of communication (requiring high mental competency and developed spatial mapping). Music, vocal control and vocal learning are exemplified as another complex means of conveying context specific bilateral messages. Moreover, personal, social and cultural consequences of the different informational exchange modes in Pan are dealt with in comparison to humans (e.g., individual versus group identity, selfhood and personality). The Pan subjects described in this study include bonobos and chimpanzees from different sanctuaries and zoos in three continents, thus providing a broad vision on the communicational repertoire of captive Pan. This essay confirms that Pan possess all the essential attributes required for hominin-type communication and argues that as such they should be allowed to fulfill their potential as sister species to humans. We propose that further studies conducted in captivity and in the wild will enable the construction of a lexicon for Pan proto-language, and thus promote the development of a Pan/ human dialog through alliance building.
Research fields adhere to particular epistemic frameworks that outline the methodological rules of conduct on how to study and interpret primate behavior as both social and communicative. Since the onset of social communication studies, epistemic focus has shifted from behaviorist observations to an examination of the cognitive and neurological capacities that underlie the observed communicative behavior and subsequently, toward an investigation of the evolutionary units, levels, and mechanisms whereby social communication evolved. This volume brings together scholars from within these diverse fields who (1) investigate the historical and epistemic roots of the primate communication/human language divide; (2) identify and analyze the building blocks of social communication; (3) examine how primate social communication strategies are evolutionary precursors of human language; and (4) analyze how social communication differs from human language. In their chapters, the contributors explain the merits and pitfalls of their field-specific epistemic approaches. They compare them to other theoretical frameworks and they give guidelines on how theory formation on the origin and evolution of social communication in primates can be enhanced by allowing for epistemic plurality. Emotions, expressions, vocal signaling, and manual and bodily gestures are evolved means whereby primates, including humans, communicate socially. Additionally, humans have invented signed and vocal languages that not only enable social communication but also abstract, symbolic, and creative thought on the past, present, future, and the inexistent. The development and evolution of social communication in humans and other primates has been studied from within multiple disciplines, ranging from ethology and comparative zoology, over primatology and comparative psychology, to evolutionary psychology and evolutionary linguistics. In this volume, contributors examine the epistemic frameworks of these various fields and they give directions for future research.