PSYCHOLINGUISTICS : Animals and Language Learning

Human beings have language, but what about animals? Do apes, dolphins, or other creatures have language and use their language to communicate with one another as we do? If they don’t have their own language, can we teach them some sort of human language? But if they cannot learn human language, would this mean that they are lacking in intelligent, or would it mean that day lack specific innate language ability that only humans are born with?

Teaching Speech to Apes

The earliest-known scientific attempt at teaching language to an ape was that of Furness (1916) in the USA, who attempted to teach an orangutan to speak. The brief four-month project ended in tragedy, when the animal died with a high fever while repeating the two words it had learned to say “papa” and “cup”.

Winthrop and Luella Kellogg (Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933; Kellogg, 1968) raised a female chimp named Gua along with their own son, Donald. Their idea was that by giving the chimpanzee the same input and social interaction as a human child, the chimpanzee would learn language in the same way that the human child learns its first language.

Gua, a female, and Donald, the boy, were born less than three months apart, with Gua being the younger. For nine months they were raised in the home as siblings initially on problem-solving tests and tests of mental ability the two scored the same, but over time the boy surpassed the chimp. The Kellogg noted that Gua demonstrated an exceptional ability to learn by imitation but that the boy was more versatile and continuous in his learning. Gua was raised in an ordinary speech environment with no specific language training being given. The Kelloggs wanted to see if Gua could learn language as ordinary human children do, where language training is not given. During the same time, however, the boy had become reasonably fluent in the spoken speech with some syntactic complexity.

However, the researchers reported that by 16 month of age, and over the period of nine months during which she was with the family, Gua learned to respond appropriately to 95 spoken words, phrases, and sentences. Her speech comprehension was therefore, substantial. She could give appropriate behavioral responses to spoken commands like “lie down”, “no no”, “shake hands”, “don’t touch”, “give it to Donald”, “get down”, “kiss Donald”. Quite an impressive achievement, even in the light of later studies, although it is not clear how well the Kellogs controlled for environmental cues which could tip off the chimp as to the correct response.

The experiment was terminated, apparently when the researchers noted the Donald was picking up too much chimpanzee-type behavior. And this another chimp that raised in human household that same raised as Gua and Donald before. Cathy and Keith Hayes who raised Viki, a baby female chimpanzee from infancy was treated as full member of the family. She ate her meals at the table, played games at home, and went on outings. She was lively and bright.

Viki was given special speech training in pronunciation. Hayes effort helped Viki to make the shape of sounds with her mouth, after three years Viki had only learned to utter four words “mama”, “papa”, “cup”, and “up”. Perhaps, Viki could say but didn’t know the meaning of these words, but these don’t seem likely.

Teaching Sign Language To The Chimpanzee, Gorilla, And Orangutan

In 1996, another couple team of psycholinguists, Allen and Beatrice Gardener (1969, 1975), began to Teach sign language to a baby chimp, a female they called Washoe (rhymes with ‘show’).

One of Washoe’s early signs was ‘open’, which expressed by a throwing out of the arms. After about for years with the Gardners, Washoe learned a vocabulary of about 130 signs and according to the Gardners, displayed two and three word utterances, such as, ‘go sweet’, when she wanted to be taken to the raspberry bushes, and ‘open food drink’, when she wanted something out of refrigerator. If such were the case, the two or three word length of utterance would be similar to that produced by human children around the age of 1 to 2 years. Comprehension, unfortunately, was not focused on by the Gardners.

One particular interest of theirs was Washoe ‘s ‘adopted’ son, Loulis, who they say, learned signs from Washoe that was demonstrating signs for Loulis and even helping to mould Loulis’s hands into the proper configurations.

Loulis used other signs, such as those for ‘hurry’ and ‘gimme’ (give me), which not directly taught to him by Washoe. However, these are gestures which are used naturally by chimpanzees.

Francine Patterson (1978a, 1978b, 1980) repots remarkable results with the gorilla Koko, born in 1971, which she has trained in American Sign Language and speech since 1972. Unlike Washoe, Koko received speech input from her trainers as well as sign and speech exposure, with help in molding the hands for sign making.

One interesting fact Patterson discovered was that Koko was productive in her sign language. Koko could make new word to describe new objects by combining previously known ones. Koko, for example, created ’eye-hat’ for mask, ‘white-tiger’ for a toy zebra, ‘finger-bracelet’ for ring, and ‘bottle-match’ for a lighter. Human languages, of course, include similar devices for word-making, e.g. ‘blackbird’ in English and ‘white bird’ for swan in Japanese.

After four-and-a half years of instruction Koko had learned 132 sign words. After 10 more years that total came to 500 or more. This is impressive compared to the achievements of the chimpanzees; it is below the level, though, of that of 3 –year-old human child, whose vocabulary, Koko’s syntax has not progressed beyond the same elemental level as that of the chimpanzees who were taught language, i.e. two or three words utterances.

As far as speech is concerned, it is claimed that Koko is able to comprehend in speech whatever she can understand in sign (Patterson & Lindeln, 1981). Patterson also reports that Koko uses her signs for such purposes as to swear, rhyme, joke, and lie. She further states that Koko can refer to past incidents, thus showing one of the cardinal characteristics of human language, displacement, i.e, the ability to refer to events removed in time and place from the act of communication. For example, when asked in sign, ‘you remember what you had for breakfast?’ she replied with the sign, ‘yes, cake’ (Patterson, 1980, p.540). the fact, that Koko said ‘cake’ as a response indicates that she at least knew the word ‘breakfast’ and associated cake with breakfast.

In the late 1970s, Miles (1983, 1990) started to teach American Sign Language to a male orangutan named Chantek, which in Malaysians means beautiful. Miles’s project differed from other which has focused on language; she was concerned with cognitive and communicative process that might underlie language development.

After several years of interaction with his care givers, Chantek to use a vocabulary of 140 signs which signify objects, actions, proper names, attributes, locatives, and pronouns. Miles (1990) states that in the second month of training Chantek began to combine signs into sequences spontaneously. Chantek used ‘apple’ for pineapple, ‘cracker’ for cookie, ‘nut’ for small round pistol caps, ‘beard’ for hair, and so on. Chantek too clearly demonstrated the ability to refer to object which were not present, i.e. displacement. Displacement is a feature which earlier theorists had previously considered to be solely a human phenomenon. For example, he signed ‘cereal + point’ n reference to food kept in the refrigerator, ‘food + eat’ prior to breakfast, and ‘car + ride’ while pulling the caregivers toward the parking lot. Overall Chantek acquired vocabulary items, but like the other apes, little syntax. Chantek’s general achievement was lower than that Koko and was more like that of Washoe.

Teaching Artificial Languages To Chimpanzee

The Rumbaughs (Rumbaugh, 1977; Savage-Rumbaugh & Rumbaugh, 1978) taught the chimp Lana a simple artificial language called Yerkish. Lana was named after the research programed which was called the Language Analogue project. Lana was just over 2 years old when the project began. Lana had to press certain keys in the right sequence to make request and consequently receive desired items, e.g. ‘please machine give milk’ or ‘please Tim give ball’. Lana learned hundreds of sentences in this fashion. She had names for people, food, objects, and even special phrase ‘that-which-is’ to name things she did not know the name of .

Unfortunately, Lana’s sentences were not created according to rule but were learned by rote, in a way similar to memorizing important whole sentences in a foreign language such as ‘where is the toilet?’This learning does not provide one with the ability to create novel sentences Lana produced had to be learned over many trials. Additionally, as Wallman (1992) notes, there is a problem with this and many of the ape-language studies because ‘there is no evidence to suggest that Lana had any notion of the meaning of “please” or even a child’s rudimentary understanding of the sociolinguistic rules governing its usage’.

David Premack of the University of Pennsylvania involving a chimp by the name of Sarah. Premack gave Sarah 130 plastic tokens with magnets so that they could be manipulated easily by her and others. These included tokens for the names of colours such as ‘red’ and ‘blue’ for different fruits such as ‘banana’ and ‘peach’, and for actions such as ‘wash’, ‘cut’, and ‘take’.

 Animals Communication In The Wild

Human speech is only one small part of the communicative inventory of chirps, hisses, growls, snort, whistles, gestures, barks, and buzzes which we find in the rest of animal kingdom. Animals communicate through a wide variety of means. At the basic level animals have many of the same reasons as we do for passing information; to get food, to find a mate, to warn, to threaten, etc.

Many animals use sound signals, but many also use other sense modalities. Substances involving smell may be used as signals, as in the case of ants, which leave chemical trails for nestmates to follow in finding food. Visual signals may, for example, be used by dogs to threaten or attack; the barring of teeth and tail-wagging, respectively, serve to convey such intentions.

·      Vervet monkeys

The most complex type of communication in the wild, unsurprisingly, involves that the higher primates. Seyfarth and Cheney report that wild vervet monkeys’ specific sounds that more complicated than hitherto believed. For example, these monkeys’ alarm calls seem to be predator-specific. Thus, while several type of grunt indicates

-       “Beware, here comes an eagle!” these grunts could just as well be interpreted as meaning ‘danger from above’.

-       “Beware, here comes a leopard!” these grunts could just as well be interpreted as meaning ‘danger from bushes’.

-       “Beware, here comes a snake!” these grunts could just as well be interpreted as meaning ‘danger from ground’.

The basic fact remains: vervet monkeys use different grunts to signal different predators.

·      Turn-Taking in Sound-Making

Animals have been found to use human linguistic phenomena in natural communication (Snowden, 1999). For example monkeys take turn s in their communication (one monkey waits for the other to finish before making sounds). Communication of birds is often similarly governed.

·      Bird Calls

As researcher have determined, the bird calls and songs of particular species are largely innate, although there are certain aspects of calls and songs which will not develop unless the young bird is exposed to the voice of the adult bird. The interest of the birds can imitate human speech (and other sounds) with amazing clarity. One bird can have a repertoire of a number of phrases and sentences, such as “Hello, how are you?” and “get away from there!” Rarely, though, does the bird produce an utterance in a relevant context.

·      Honey Bees; The Information Dance

Of great interest, is the way honey bees inform other bees of the presence of food in the vicinity. They use both vision and touch. A bee reporting back to the hive will go through a series of movements, a kind of dance, to tell other bees if a nectar source is near or distant and moreover, if it is distant, just how far away and in what direction. Other bees can get the message not only by seeing these movements but by touching that is by approaching the scout bee and feeling its movement by their antennae.

                   Biological and Neurological Basis of Language

Human and animals is different creature although they have some similarities. For example they have instinct to continue their life. But human and animal have clear differences.  That is language.

Actually we cannot say that we can speak and animal cannot because the fact is we as human have different system of language with the animal. It means that animal has their own language to express something.

Biological Basis of Language

Human has ability to communicate with other person by using language. With this kind of ability, they can share their idea and express their emotion. The question is “why the animal cannot speak as human do?” Scientifically this is because the biological structure of human and animal is different.  We can see it in their organ of speech.

The example is chimpanzee. Some scientists believe that chimpanzee is an animal that has some similarities with human. Even Charles Darwin believes that human and chimpanzee are come from same family. Chimpanzee has a thin and long tongue in their mouth. The shape of their tongue is suitable only for their need in non-language need such as touching something, tasting, licking and swallowing their foods. Comparatively, the ratio of their tongue to their mouth is restricted so they have no enough space to move their tongue freely.  This limited space make chimpanzee or animal cannot modify a sound to become another sound.

Different with human, larynx in animal such as chimpanzee is located on their air channel to the nose so when they take a breath, their larynx pushed to the upper mouth and closes the air hole to the nose. Their Epiglottis and Velum make some kind like water resistant blockages which make them can breathe and eat in the same time.

Moreover, if we look at their teeth, we can see that their teeth are not structural. Their sizes are not same and their position is tending to front (Aitchison 1998: 48-49). This shape and position make their upper teeth to meet with lower teeth. This is because they were formed to fulfill their primer need as primate that is looking for foods. Beside that their lips also strict or not flexible so they cannot use it to produce different sounds.

However, it is different with human’s mouth characteristic. Human’s mouth is small proportionally. This size makes human can control over their mouth. Their tongue is thicker than chimpanzee or other primate. Beside that human’s tongue is more flexible to move freely. This kind of position makes human can produce different sounds.

Because the effect of increasing brain hollowness in human life, the position of larynx and epiglottis moving to the lower mouth which make it far from mouth (Ciani and Chiarelli 1992: 51-65). If we compare it with the animal, we can see that the human’s mouth structure is risky because human can get choked. In the other hand, this position is good or effective to produce sound. The wider and longer space in human’s throat can give good resonances.

The position of epiglottis which is far from the position of mouth and velum make human can pass the air through their mouth or nose. Their velum can move separately to get adhere with the throat so the air will be prevented to come out from the nose,,,, and we have made Oral sound.

The position of human’s teeth are densely, their high almost same and didn’t tend to front. This thing makes human control the air effectively. Moreover, their lips are flexible so they can produce different sounds such as /m/,/p/,/b/,/f/,/b/ etc.

Beside that, our lung can synchronize with our need. Our respiration when we speak, relaxing, and sing are not same. When we speak, we will take a long breathe so our lung will be bigger. The air is not blowing spontaneously but little by little based on our need. Therefore we cam speak for hour.

Simply we can say that Allah swt give us one of many best gifts, that is language. In the contrast we can say that human is fated to become a speaking creature.

But once again, animal has their own language. We cannot judge that they cannot speak. We as human also cannot speak animal language. If the animals are clever perhaps someday they will research us because our language is different with them.