Subject: interim summary : anthropoid linguistic ability

in linguist 5-1467 ( 18 dec . 1994 ) , i posted the following query : ) douglas h . chadwick , in his review of kanzi : the ape at the brink of the ) human mind , by sue savage - rumbaugh and roger lewin ( nytimes book review , ) dec . 11 , 1994 , pp . 15-19 ) , says , ) ) ) . . . this goes a long way toward countering the complaint that language - ) ) using apes are merely responding to cues from researchers or , at best , ) ) learning rote behavior to get rewards without really comprehending the ) ) meaning of the words they employ . . . . part of the problem is that the ) ) authors are playing by rules laid down by their critics . it was rene ) ) descartes . . . who fashioned the longstanding paradigm of animals as ) ) automatons [ sic ] , incapable of doing anything other than mindlessly ) ) responding to whatever forces impinge on them . descartes insisted that ) ) animals cannot even feel real pain or pleasure , much less understand or ) ) remember the experience . . . . in our era , this tradition has been carried ) ) on by linguistics experts equally intent on preserving language and rea - ) ) son for the exclusive use of humans . each time an ape demonstrates ei - ) ) ther ability , the linguists set about redefining language and reason in ) ) more complex and confusing ways , erecting yet more artificial barriers ) ) for primates to hurdle . ) ) excuse me , is this something i ' ve missed in my seven years of grad school ) and subsequent four years of professional activity in linguistics ? are ) we deliberately engaged in a dastardly plot to deny our anthropoid cou - ) sins their birthright ? psycholinguistics has never been one of my fortes , ) but i certainly do n't remember anything in the introductory survey cour - ) ses i ' ve taken myself or developed to teach to others anything so much as ) hinting that it is an a priori assumption of the field of linguistics ) that language is the exclusive prerogative of homo sapiens , only that ) it 's an important part of the package that defines that species . ) ) i remember enthusiastically inflated claims made back in the 50 's about ) the forseeable progress in computer technology - - predictions as to how ) quickly we would get computers that could not only converse with us in ) real time in some given human language ( default : english ) but whop any ) human being in chess as well . as all ai researchers know , it soon became ) clear that these predictions were based in part on an oversimplified ) notion of what constituted language ( if i remember correctly , some ) premises were on the level of edgar rice - burroughs ' endowing his heroes ) with a 's pectacular ability to master alien languages ' that consisted of ) an ability to memorize a dictionary ) . and i understand that many claims ) about ' ape language ' , and the rebuttals from the community of linguists , ) have been at similar levels . but it seems to me that this is quite ) different from the scenario in which the academic linguist , threatened by ) the physical anthropologist , mutters , ' hmm ; so far we ' ve felt safe with ) this definition of linguistic competence , but this chimp has mastered ) that . we ' ll have to change the definition if we want to avoid miscege - ) nation ! ' , which is apparently what chadwick is envisioning . ) ) now , i daresay there may be individual linguists who do react this way , ) just as in previous eras there were scientists who would from time to ) time redefine the standards of what constituted full humanity . or civi - ) lization , or what have you , to maintain the claim that whatever it was , ) the native peoples of africa and the western hemisphere did n't have it . ) but i certainly do n't , and i ' m not aware of any of my colleagues that ) do insist , as the sectional headline in the nyt book review has it , ' on ) keeping language and reason for humans alone ' ( i ' m also a little be - ) mused at this conflation of language and reason ; language has never ) struck me as an entirely ' rational ' process ) , much less that , as chadwick ) and , by derivation , said headline imply , that as a professional class we ) are unanimous in doing so . ) ) i ' m considering writing a letter to the editor to complain about this ; if ) anybody else has already done so , please let me know . but what i really ) want to know is , what is the current general consensus ( if there is one ) of ) the field on this subject ? are the claims in the savage - rumbaugh & lewin ) book anent kanzi 's linguistic ability valid ? or is some further clari - ) fication in order ? is it just that some researchers in this area have ) a ( perhaps understandable ) chip on their shoulder ? or is there a real ) conflict between theoretical linguists on the one hand and physical an - ) thropologists and primatologists on the other on this subject ? first of all , david pesetsky did write a letter to the new york times , which was published in the dec . 25 issue of the times book review , and i refer all interested parties to it ( for some reason , i can't find my copy at the moment ) . secondly , i 'd like to thank the following scholars who got in touch with me over the holidays to discuss this issue , discussion to be summarized below : john h . chalmers ( non12 @ cyber . net ) dick hudson ( uclrah @ ucl . ac . uk ) massimo piattelli - palmarini ( piattem @ dipsco . hsr . it ) tom j . pulju ( pulju @ ricevm1 . rice . edu ) harold schiffman ( haroldfs @ u . washington . edu ) discussion proceeded along two logically distinct questions : ( 1 ) what is currently the most accurate assessment of the ' linguistic performance ' , ( and , by inference , linguistic ability ) of the anthropoids ? ( 2 ) why are such people as the gardners , savage - rumbaugh , chadwick , etc . so irritated at us ? on the first question , all of my respondents , as well as david pesetsky , seem to be agreed that the most impressive ' linguistic ' performance of chimps and gorillas reported in the literature is at a level roughly equi - valent to that of a human child of approximately two years of age , but that the anthropoids seem to be unable to develop beyond that stage . in particular , they show no evidence for syntactic structure , nor for any ability to distance themselves temporally or spatially from the referents of their statements . i received statements such as the following : ' the most successful of the apes have managed to reach more or less the level of children in the two-word utterance stage . the size of the lexi - con is about the same , as is the combinatory ability . ' ' the apes master a refined system of communication , and are capable of some abstract thinking , but lack the very fundamentals of human language ( recursiveness , structure-dependency , parsing into constituents , etc . ) . ' ' the chimps mostly have a lexicon , and a rudimentary syntax that lets them distinguish between actor and patient , but that 's about all . . . . the chimps ( a ) have no morphology to speak of ( b ) can't use displacement of the message ( i . e . , can't talk about the past or future , or something that happens / ed in another location ) ' [ at a venture , i would guess that they can't handle contrafactuals either . ] ' it is claimed that the ape " utterances " lack grammaticality or syntax . the apes can make the correct symbolic associations , but have no sense of grammatical patterning . in two and three " word " sentences , the order of the elements is variable and each element maybe repeated any number of times in any order and independently of the rest ( sequences like give banana give kanzi kanzi banana kanzi give , etc . ) ' one of my respondents , partly on the basis of hanns own occasionally frus - trating experiences resulting from the geographical proximity of an insti - tution presumably devoted to the 's tudy ' of anthropoid language , made some critical statements about the scientific methodology of some of this research . in particular , after referring to hockett 's 16 'd esign fea - tures ' of language , hann remarks : ' the proponents ' claim that [ chimps ] do have cultural transmission , because washo taught her son , does n't bear up under much scrutiny ; washo had to be rewarded to learn every sign and her son has not learned as many , nor passed them on to any other chimp . i see what the chimps learned as the equivalent of a pidgin ; but creoliza - tion never took place . ' which implies ( 1 ) that anthropoid ' language ' ac - tually corresponds to the skinnerian model refuted by chomsky in his fa - mous review as regards human language and ( 2 ) that it is not sufficiently ' natural ' to the anthropoids for them to feel motivated to transmit it successfully . some of my respondents addressed some of the wider theoretical and metho - dological issues relevant to linguistics implicit in this discussion . one opined ' that some dismissal of ape language research is partly , and unconsciously , motivated by a turf-protection instinct . we ' re all alrea - dy uneasy about the fact that there are certain subfields of linguistics whose importance we acknowledge but which we ' re not personally terribly well-versed in . . . . i think many theoretical linguists breathed a sigh of relief when terrace announced that [ the chimp ] nim had n't really learned human language at all . it meant that they did n't have to worry about mo - difying their theories to fit ape language data . ' another said , ' most linguists do n't really care ( at least not consciously ) about whether apes can learn language as such , but they do care deeply about whether lan - guage is " sui generis " and innate or not . . . . as far as linguists are concerned , we ' re divided over chomsky 's claim that language is a geneti - cally-programmed module , rather than an area of knowledge which is han - dled by general cognition . if apes can't learn language at all , that supports the chomskyan view ( which presumably involves some cataclysmic mutation say 100 , 000 years ago , or at least since we split off from the other primates ) . if they can learn some of it , we have evidence for ge - neral cognition ( where apes are presumably less well endowed than us , so you 'd expect partial success ) . ' in further discussion we agreed that this argument only held if we accept a 's trong ' version of the relevant dichotomy implicit in the innateness hypothesis , according to which human linguistic ability is overwhelmingly if not completely independent of general human cognition . i pointed out that even if chimps are demonstrably distinct from us on a genetic level they still share over 98 % of our dna . so even if they share some of our linguistic ability it might mean that they also share some of the distinc - tive genetic endowment that provides it . a more effective test would be on cetaceans or pachyderms , which are nowhere as nearly related to us as chimps are but which appear to have roughly comparable cognitive levels . if they also share a certain amount of our linguistic ability , that would indicate that at least that amount is probably dependent more on general cognitive ability than on any specific genetic endowment . if chimps , dolphins , elephants , whatever , can't master human language but have other modes of communication * not isomorphic * with ours but of * comparable com - plexity and flexibility * , then this would give us the opportunity to stu - dy how much of human language is necessary to the general phenomenon of language and how much is incidental and of relevance only to our species ; it might also enable us to talk about the ' innateness ' of human linguistic ability in terms that would not be offputting to geneticists . on the second question , the basis for the irritation towards academic lin - guists on the part of the proponents of anthropoid language , there was some consensus that they were working with an overly simplistic concep - tion of what constitutes language , and were offended that we refused to share it . typical were the following remarks : ' all the [ proponents ] of animal language , and of its continuity with hu - man language , assume that human natural languages simply * are * the result of communication and use . . . . the basic design of human languages is * not * dictated by use , and we can easily conceive of species that would possess a * radically * different design for language and would communicate just as well , if not better . ' ' the gardners et al . have an extremely elementary grasp of what is real language . they think that if they have a lexicon and bare syntax , that 's all there is . their other argument , that the apes have " real " sign lan - guage , is also pitiful . . . . the approach trivializes both oral languages and sign languages . ' there was , however , some acknowledgment that some of the ' blame ' for this state of affairs belongs on our doorstep . the ' trivialization ' just men - tioned was claimed to be due at least in part to inadequacies in state - ments by linguists in the 50 's and 60 's . one respondent in particular pointed to an inveterate tendency to try to identify a single , defining , characteristic as the sine qua non of human linguistic ability , rather than accepting the fact that such important distinctions are often proper - ly made on the basis of mosaics of characteristics . in particular , much research in anthropoid ' language ' has apparently focussed on the ability of chimps and gorillas to coin novel expressions , unanticipated by their human teachers / handlers , on the basis of a finite number of memorized ' lexemes ' and some basic combinatorial principles . this effort has suppo - sedly been motivated by early assertions by academic linguists that what distinguishes human language from all other forms of animal communication is its creative ability . when the gardners , etc . , demonstrate that their apes are capable of similar creativity and we then say , ' very nice but that 's not language ' , they are understandably miffed . in response to this , i think what is necessary is greater tact , humility , and honesty on all our parts . we need to admit up front that we ( or our predecessors ) have oversimplified in the past , and give credit to the ape researchers for helping to elucidate the issues . and we need to make it clear that what chimps , gorillas , and two-year - old humans share is in some sense a * rudimentary * linguistic ability , but not equivalent to what adult humans do . in short , we need to increase everybody 's awareness of the inherent rich - ness and complexity of human linguistic behaviour , which to my mind means we need to devote more time and energy to introductory courses in general linguistics ! harold schiffman reports some encouraging success in this direction with a course on linguistic anthropology at the university of washington . further discussion on the issues raised here is welcome , either in perso - nal communication with me or in general discussion on the list . i hope in the not too distant to be able to post a short list of references to published literature on this subject . best , steven - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - dr . steven schaufele 712 west washington urbana , il 61801 217-344 - 8240 fcosws @ prairienet . org * * * * o syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum ! * * * * * * nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis ! * * *
