Language is one of the most precious elements we have. It is so precious that it has been the centrepiece of a struggle by various branches of the sciences to discover its origins and define it for many generations. The behaviourists laid claim to it in the 1950s and gave it a special name, ‘verbal behaviour’, to entice it into their field to lay among the other behaviours that they so obviously owned. Chomsky, at the end of the decade, stole it back for the linguists by asserting language was an innate, modular part of the mind, unlike any other form of knowledge. Recently, the cognitive scientists have staked their claim for the ownership of language by suggesting it is learnt as a general cognitive skill, the way all skills are learnt. What is it about language that makes it so wanted?

Language is enigmatic. It is emphatically  simple yet at the same time esoterically complex. Its dual nature mirrors that of DNA which gives us life from simple combinations of amino acids. Language gives us knowledge, wisdom and power. It is language that so clearly reveals the discontinuity between man and animal as Walker (1983: 387) clearly believes:

Of all the discontinuities between man and animals that could be quoted, including the exclusively human faculties for abstraction, reason, morality, culture and technology, and the division of labour… the evergreen candidate for the fundamental discontinuity, which might qualify all others, is language. (Walker, 1983: 387)

But is this separation one of a kind or degree? This is the central question of the long-standing debate between the ‘evolutionists’, who search for the precursor to language in primate communication, and the ‘essentialists’, who believe that language is qualitatively unique and originated with humans. Within this debate, the use of Hockett’s design features (Hockett, 1968) and ‘human standards’ as the yardstick have been used to the full, as King (1994: 5) so disapprovingly notes:

…the debate about the evolution of language as a whole …. is characterized by the use of human standards. It is this very commonality of approach that helps to solidify the debate, wrongly in my view, around construction of trait lists aimed at deciding whether monkeys and apes can do what humans do. (King, 1994: 5)

For the linguist, the yardstick is a tool that he keeps close at hand as seemingly endless reports from animal researchers come in claiming ever greater achievements in apes with linguistic-like skills. My aim in this paper is to show how the yardstick can be put away without fear of losing ground in the battle. But I shall not do this by pulling out a new yardstick and claiming it to be better and more accurate than the old. Instead, I shall show how the variable to be measured and the ruler itself are mismatched, rather like trying to measure pressure with a thermometer or wind speed with a weathercock.

Current Status of Research into Ape Language

The evolutionists suffered a blow at the end of the  ’70s when Terrace (1979a: 901), one of the leading protagonists on their side, openly claimed in an article entitled, ‘Can an ape create a sentence?’ in Science that, ‘Apes… show no unequivocal evidence of mastering the conversational, semantic or syntactic organization of a sentence.’ Terrace had been disappointed with his own efforts to teach Nim, a chimpanzee, to communicate using American Sign Language (ASL). After four years of study, Terrace found little evidence for any structure in Nim’s multi-word signs:

However, objective analysis of our data, as well as those obtained by other studies, yielded no evidence of an ape’s ability to use a grammar. Each instance of presumed grammatical competence could be explained adequately by simple non-linguistic processes. (Terrace, 1979a: 891)

Further, after analyzing videotapes, Terrace found that many of Nim’s signs were imitations of signs that his teachers had just produced:

 A third “discourse” analysis of videotape transcripts shows that Nim’s signs were often prompted by his teacher’s prior signs. (Terrace, 1979a: 893)

Terrace also criticized the Gardners for not reporting the order of Washoe’s (their chimp) multi-sign combinations…

With but two minor exceptions, the Gardeners did not report the order of signs of Washoe’s multi-sign combinations. For example, more tickle and tickle more were both reported as instances of more tickle … (Terrace, 1979a: 892)

… and came down hard on apes such as Lana and Sarah by arguing that their ‘sentences’ were in no way discernible from key-pecks produced by pigeons.

This influential article, together with a conference in May 1980 called ‘The Clever Hans Phenomenon’, did much to convince many that the claims of the researchers into ape languages were false and that the ape’s utterances were mere tricks along the lines of a circus act. The tide turned and much of the research funding dried up (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1994: 55).

But during the mid ’80s, a new star was found in Kanzi, a pygmy chimpanzee, who, unlike his predecessors, had learnt the meaning of lexigrams (footnote 1) quite unconsciously as an infant chimp while observing his mother’s fruitless efforts. This ‘pre-critical period’, early acquisition, was seized on by his trainer, Savage-Rumbaugh (1994),  who from the outset concentrated on developing symbolic reference in Kanzi’s utterances rather than looking for grammatical competence.

Kanzi quickly acquired an active  vocabulary and was able to requests his favourite foods as well as initiate conversations and name items. Only 10% of his utterances were multi-word utterances, but most were spontaneous according to Savage-Rumbaugh (1994: 144):

Nearly all (more than 90%) of Kanzi’s multi-word utterances were spontaneous; that is they were not responses to teachers’ requests or imitations of teacher’s utterances. (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1994: 144)

Kanzi’s comprehension of spoken language appears to be even more startling. Savage-Rumbaugh (1994: 173) showed in a test that his comprehension was equal to that of a 2-year-old human child. She comments:

The test [for comprehension of spoken English] demonstrated what I had believed to be correct: namely that Kanzi’s comprehension went far beyond single words and single phrases. (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1994: 173)

Tomasello (1994: 383) goes as far as saying that he believes Kanzi has a grammatical class for nouns:

He [Kanzi] has something like a grammatical category of noun allowing him to comprehend (and perhaps produce) newly learned object labels in the same sentence frames in which   previously learned object labels have been used. He has yet to form any class of verbs or subclass thereof, however, that would license word order or other grammatical generalizations across events. (Tomasello, 1994: 383)

Despite the optimistic claims of Tomasello, most people are still reluctant to credit apes with anything but the bare rudiments of linguistic ability. Wallman concludes his study of Kanzi with the following comment:

If Kanzi’s use of language tokens is different in kind from that of previous subjects, then the difference does not lie mainly in the purposes to which he applies them… Moreover, the aspect of Kanzi’s linguistic behaviour that are unique to this subject … give Kanzi the best claim thus far for reference. Wallman (1992: 76)

It is fair to say that research into language development in non-human primates has not advanced much further than the achievements of Kanzi in the mid 1980s.

Re-defining the question

During the ten years or so since the reports of the apes’ achievements, most people on either side of the debate have looked for ways to redefine the question at hand, rather than opening old war wounds on the same battle field. Hockett’s design features (Hockett, 1968) now seem hopelessly one-sided in the debate and there seems little leverage to be gained in analyzing non-human, primate communication along these lines.

Some have looked to child language acquisition to see if similarities can be found between the early utterances of children and those of the apes like Kanzi and Nim. However, even here we find a gap (although arguably not insurmountable) between the way children seem to use their early language and the way apes do.

Firstly, many of the apes’ signs on closer inspection appeared to be imitations of their teachers’ signs. Children, on the other hand, rarely repeat the utterances of their parents but tend to produce novel, spontaneous utterances (Terrace, 1979b: 215). Secondly, the vast majority of Kanzi’s utterances (and the other apes too) were requests, usually for food, (Wallman, 1992: 75) suggesting that he only had one speech act. There was very little use of the words outside of these highly contextualized situations. And in particular, few utterances were used to ‘comment’ on situations. In contrast, it has been found that the majority of a child’s early utterances comment on something novel in the child’s immediate environment. Also Terrace has shown that there was very little turn-taking with the signing apes, (Nim and Washoe) whereas ‘children show a good sense of when to listen and when to talk.’ (Terrace, 1979b: 219)

Symbolic Communication

Whether we draw similarities between the utterances of apes and the early utterances of children or not, it is clear that children go on to acquire a language in full whereas apes do not. On the road to full linguistic competence, the child de-couples early words from their context thus achieving symbolic reference. Deacon (1997: 43) has dubbed us the ‘symbolic species’ because of our (almost) unique ability to use words symbolically:

The first major task of this book, then, is to describe precisely the difference between this unique human mode of reference, which can be termed symbolic reference, and the forms of nonsymbolic reference that are found in all nonhuman communication. (Deacon, 1997: 43)

Semioticians often quote three levels of referential relationship as noted by the American philosopher, Charles Sanders Pierce (1940). Pierce distinguished between iconic reference, indexical reference and symbolic reference. Each level of reference builds on the previous level. That is, indexical reference requires an understanding of iconic reference and symbolic reference requires an understanding of indexical reference. The important point is that it is the interpretive procedure that determines the reference. For example, a sign is not iconic, even if it looks very similar to its referent, unless it is interpreted as being iconic.

Laughter would be a good example of indexical (associative) reference as would the alarm calls of the vervet monkey. Words achieve symbolic reference by building on this indexical relationship with another layer that locks the word into a relationship with other words. It is this dual reference potential of a word, to the object it represents and to other words, that makes it symbolic. The classic distinction is captured in the terms reference (pointing to an object) and sense (pointing to other words).

Deacon (1997: 84) suggests that Kanzi and a few of the other apes demonstrated symbolic reference but also notes how words in isolation lose their symbolic reference and fail to create a language (Deacon, 1997: 83):

 Thus the imagined version of a nonhuman language that is made up of isolated words, but lacking regularities that govern possible combinations is ultimately a contradiction in terms. (Deacon, 1997: 83)

Since most of Kanzi’s utterances were one-word signs, it would be difficult to call these an example of a  symbolic language. Symbolic communication or symbolic reference, perhaps, but not language. The distinction drawn between language and communication here is crucial for our hypothesis and requires further explanation.

Part 2 of this article is here

Footnotes

[1] Lexigrams are small, plastic symbols arranged on a board. Each lexigram arbitrarily represents an object or verb. When the chimpanzee pressed a lexigram, a corresponding lexigram would light up on a projector screen.

References

Deacon, T., (1997), The Symbolic Species, 1997, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.

Hockett, C.F., & Altmann, S.A.,  (1968), ‘A note on design features.’ in Sebeok, T.A. (ed), Animal Communication: techniques of study and results of research, Bloomington, Indiana, 61-72

King, B.J., (1994), ‘Evolutionism and Essentialism’, Language and Communication 14, 1-13

Pierce, C.S., (1940), in Buchler, J. (ed), The Philosophy of Pierce: Selected Writings, Kegan Paul, London.

Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S., (1994),  Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind, Doubleday

Terrace, M.S., (1979a), ‘Can an ape create a sentence?’,  Science, 206, 891-900

Terrace, M.S., (1979b), Nim, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Tomasello, M., (1994), ‘Can an ape understand a sentence? A review of language comprehension in ape and child by E.S. Savage-Rumbaugh et al.’, Language and Communication, 14, 377-390

Walker, S., (1983) Animal Thought, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

Wallman, J., (1992), Aping Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.