NO: Linguist Joel Wallman counters that attempts to teach chimps
and other apes sign language or other symbolic systems have dem-
onstrated that apes are very intelligent animals. But up to now
these attempts have not shown that apes have any innate capacity
ISSUE 8
for language.
Can Apes Learn Language?
For
YES: E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh, from “Language Training of Apes," in
Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam, eds., The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
NO: Joel Wallman, from Aping Language (Cambridge University
Press, 1992)
Learning Outcomes
After reading this issue, you should be able to:
• Understand several attempts to teach chimpanzees and other
apes American Sign Language and some of the difficulties
these researchers encountered.
• Discuss how ape-language projects in the laboratory are quite
different from any study of ape communication in natural
settings.
Explain some of the criticisms other researchers have offered
against these efforts to teach chimpanzees to use sign lan-
guage as a symbolic system.
• Discuss why chimpanzees learning a small number of signs
from American Sign Language might not suggest any inherent
ability to use human language.
• Evaluate the arguments offered by those researchers who have
trained apes to use signs and their relationship to the use of
humankind's ability to make tools and use language were two characteris-
or more than a century, anthropologists have generally assumed that
tics that distinguished humans from all other animals. British anthropologist
Kenneth P. Oakley, for example, first published his little volume entitled Man
the Tool-Maker (London: Trustees of the British Museum) in 1949, which was
republished in new or revised editions in the 1950s and 1960s by the Univer-
sity of Chicago Press for use as a supplementary college textbook. In the 1960s
and 1970s, Jane Goodall and other primatologists convincingly demonstrated
that chimpanzees, our nearest biological relatives, made simple tools, narrow-
ing the gap between apes and humans.
Beginning in the 1940s a series of other scientists have worked with
gorillas, chimps, and most recently the bonobo (or pygmy chimp) attempting
to teach these apes simple forms of human-like language.
In the 1950s, the psychologist B.F. Skinner had argued that human
children learned natural language through conditioning, such that posi-
tive responses to utterances from proud parents and other adults essentially
trained children to recognize both grammatical patterns and vocabulary. But
in the 1960s, linguist Naom Chomsky disproved Skinner's theory showing
that human language is so highly complex that it must require some innate
biological capability that he called a “language acquisition device." In several
respects, all of the ape-language experiments since then have sought to under-
stand when this biological capacity for language learning evolved in primates.
If
apes could use simple language then this biological capacity was present
very early in our prehuman lineage.
The early years of the ape-language projects encountered one major dif-
ficulty
. Try as they might
, trainers could not get apes to vocalize human words
reliably. This difficulty was a consequence of the fact that a chimp's vocal
apparatus simply does not allow the possibility of human utterances. So efforts
to teach apes how to use language had to overcome the problem of vocaliza-
tion with some other means of communication.
Since Chomsky's studies of human language, linguists have generally
accepted that the manipulation of symbols in systematic grammatical ways,
rather than the ability to make utterances, is the most important and complex
able linguistic utterances have no difficulty learning the grammar (phonology,
aspect of human language. Deaf people who have difficulty making recogniz-
morphology, and syntax) of normal language. Thus, if apes could manipulate
symbols in linguistic ways, researchers hoped they could demonstrate that the
ability to acquire language was a biological capacity shared by at least certain
species of the apes and humans.
171
human language.
ISSUE SUMMARY
YES: Psychologist and primate specialist E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh
argues that, since the 1960s
, there have been attempts to teach
chimpanzees and other apes symbol systems similar to human
language. These studies have shown that although apes are not
capable of learning human language, they demonstrate a genuine
ability to create new symbolic patterns that are similar to very ru-
dimentary symbolic activity.
170
E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh
YES.
UARY
Language Training of Apes
?
Can
apes
young human children.
great
religious grounds-would either like to see humans as just another of the
In the 1960s, researchers began using other media that would allow
apes to use and manipulate symbols without vocalization. These approaches
included plastic shapes on a board, symbols on a computer console, and Amer-
have claimed that their chimp or gorilla students have learned symbols for
ican Sign Language, long used by deaf people. For more than 30 years, trainers
hundreds of words or concepts and many of these researchers have claimed
that such ability to manipulate symbols is analogous to symbol use among
human beings from our non-human primate relatives has fallen away. This
If true, the ability to learn and use language, the last barrier that separates
view has its supporters and detractors, many of whom-largely on political or
apes or would prefer to view human beings as unique in the animal kingdom.
But at issue is whether the long series of ape-language projects has demon-
strated that apes can learn to manipulate signs and symbols.
Psychologist and primate specialist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and her hus-
band Duane Rumbaugh have been among the most innovative researchers
in this field at the intersection of anthropology, linguistics
, and cognitive
psychology. They have argued that a certain species of pygmy chimps, the
bonobo, are biologically closest to Homo sapiens of all the great apes. Their
recent work with a bonobo named Kanzi has been among the most successful
of these ape-language projects. Here, after tracing the history of these projects,
Savage-Rumbaugh concludes that Kanzi's ability to use symbols closely resem-
bles similar abilities observed among small human children. Thus, she con-
cludes that the ability to use symbols is a trait shared by apes and humans,
even though this trait is most well developed among humans.
Linguist Joel Wallman interprets the evidence very differently from
Savage-Rumbaugh. He acknowledges that the various gorillas, chimps, and
bonobos are clever animals that have learned to respond to their trainers in
important ways. But he argues that these animals have not learned anything
resembling human language. Chimps and bonobos may be clever but they
do not have full linguistic abilities, their abilities to use mental abstractions
suggests only that very modest versions of these mental processes arose before
our branch of the hominin lineage split off from the lineages of the great apes,
These selections raise a number of questions about the similarities and
differences between apes and humans. What kind of linguistic ability do these
ape learners exhibit? Do these symbolic strings genuinely parallel early child-
hood language acquisition? Most importantly
, do these ape-language studies
show that apes and human beings genuinely share a common ability for lan-
guage? What are the minimal features that make up any natural language?
attempting to answer this question since the late 1960s when it was first
reported that a young chimpanzee named Washoe in Reno, Nevada had been
taught to produce hand signs similar to those used by deaf humans.
Washoe was reared much like a human child. People made signs to her
throughout the day and she was given freedom to move about the caravan
where she lived. She could even go outdoors to play. She was taught how to
make different signs by teachers who moved her hands through the motions of
each sign while showing her the object she was learning to 'name'. If she began
to make a portion of the hand movement on her own she was quickly rewarded,
either with food or with something appropriate to the sign. For example, if she
was being taught the sign for ‘tickle' her reward was a tickling game.
This training method was termed ‘moulding' because it involved the
physical placement of Washoe's hands. Little by little, Washoe became able to
produce more and more signs on her own. As she grew older, she occasionally
even learned to make new signs without moulding. Once Washoe had learned
several signs she quickly began to link them together to produce strings of
signs such as 'you me out'. Such sequences appeared to her teachers to be
simple sentences.
Many biologists were sceptical of the claims made for Washoe. While
they agreed that Washoe was able to produce different gestures, they doubted
that such signs really served as names. Perhaps, to Washoe, the gestures were
just tricks to be used to get the experimenter to give her things she wanted;
even though Washoe knew how and when to make signs, she really did not
know what words meant in the sense that people do.
The disagreement was more than a scholarly debate among scientists.
Decades of previous work had demonstrated that many animals could learn
to do complex things to obtain food, without understanding what they were
doing. For example, pigeons had been taught to bat a ball back and forth in
what looked like a game of ping pong. They were also taught to peck keys
with such words as 'Please', 'Thank you', 'Red' and 'Green' printed on them.
They did this in a way that made it appear that they were communicating,
but they were not; they had simply learned to peck each key when a special
signal was given.
Pilbeam, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 1992, 1999), pp. 138-141. Copyright © 1999 by
From The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David
Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.
173
172
YES / E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh
175
174
ISSUE 8 / Can Apes Learn Language?
FEBRUARY
than what to say when: they learn what words stand for.
This type of learning is called conditioned discrimination learning, a term
that simply means that an animal can learn to make one set of responses in
some aspects of human language can be explained in this way, such as 'Hello',
one group of circumstances and another in different circumstances. Although
'Goodbye', 'Please' and 'Thank you', most cannot. Human beings learn more
If Washoe had simply signed 'drink' when someone held up a bottle of
different from other animals. If, however, Washoe used the sign 'drink' to rep-
soda, there would be little reason to conclude that she was doing anything
resent any liquid beverage, then she was doing something very different-
It was difficult to determine which of these possibilities charcterised her
behaviour, as the question of how to distinguish between the 'conditioned
response' and a ‘word' had not arisen. Before Washoe, the only organisms that
used words were human beings, and to determine if a person knew what a
word stood for was easy: one simply asked. This was impossible with Washoe.
because her use of symbols was not advanced enough to allow her to compre-
hend complex questions. One- and two-year-old children are also unable to
answer questions such as these. However, because children are able to answer
such questions later on, the issue of determining how and when a child knows
that words have meanings had not until then been seen as critical.
something that everyone had previously thought only humans could do.
Teaching Syntax
Several scientists attempted to solve this problem by focusing on sentences
instead of words. Linguists argue that the essence of human language lies not
in learning to use individual words, but rather in an ability to form a large
number of word combinations that follow the same set of specific rules. These
rules are seen as a genetic endowment unique to humans. If it could be shown
that apes learn syntactical rules, then it must be true that they were using sym-
bols to represent things, not just perform tricks.
Three psychologists in the 1970s each used a different method in an
attempt to teach apes syntax. One group followed the method used with
Washoe and began teaching another chimpanzee, Nim, sign language.
Another opted for the use of plastic symbols with the chimpanzee Sarah. Still
another used geometric symbols, linked to a computer keyboard, with a chim-
panzee named Lana. Both Lana and Sarah were taught a simple syntax, which
required them to fill in one blank at a time in a string of words. The number
of blanks was slowly increased until the chimpanzee was forming a complete
'sentence'
. Nim was asked to produce syntactically correct strings by making
signs along with his teacher.
Without help from his teachers, Nim was unable to form sentences that
displayed the kind of syntactical rules used by humans. Nim's sign usage
best be interpreted as a series of 'conditioned discriminations' similar to, albeit
more complex than, behaviours seen in many less-intelligent animals. This
work suggested that Nim, like circus animals but unlike human children, was
However, the other attempts to teach sentences to apes arrived at a dif-
Sarah and Lana learned to fill in the blanks in sentences in ways that suggested
ferent conclusion, perhaps because a different training method was used. Both
they had learned the rules that govern simple sentence construction. Moreo-
ver, 6 per cent of Lana's sentences were ‘novel' in that they differed from the
ones that she had been taught. Many of these sentences, such as 'Please you
move coke in cup into room', followed syntactical rules and were appropriate
and meaningful communications. Other sentences followed the syntactical
rules that Lana had learned, but did not make sense; for example, 'Question
you give beancake shut-open'. Thus, apes appeared to be able to learn rules for
sentence construction, but they did not generalise these rules in a way that
suggested full comprehension of the words.
By 1980, Washoe had matured and given birth. At this time there was
great interest in whether or not she would teach her offspring to sign. Unfor-
tunately, her infant died. However, another infant was obtained and given
to Washoe. This infant, Loulis, began to imitate many of the hand gestures
that Washoe used, though the imitations were often quite imprecise. Washoe
made few explicit attempts to mould Loulis's hands. Although Loulis began to
make signs, it was not easy to determine why he was making them or what, if
anything, he meant. Loulis has not yet received any tests like those that were
given to Washoe to determine if he can make the correct sign when shown an
object
. It is clear that he learned to imitate Washoe, but it is not clear that he
learned what the signs meant.
The question of whether or not apes understand words caused many
developmental psychologists to study earlier and earlier aspects of language
acquisition in children. Their work gave, for the first time, a detailed insight
into how children use words during the 'one-word' stage of language learning
and showed that children usually learn to understand words before they begin
to use them. At the same time, there was a new approach to the investigation
of ape language. Instead of teaching names by pairing an object with its sign
or symbol and rewarding correct responses, there was a new emphasis on the
communicative aspect of symbols. For example, to teach a symbol such as
"key", a desirable item was locked in a box that was given to the chimpanzee.
When the chimpanzee failed to open it, he was shown how to ask for and how
to use a key. On other occasions,
the chimpanzee was asked to retrieve a key
for the teacher, so that she might open the box.
This new approach was first used with two chimpanzees named Sherman
and Austin. It resulted in a clearer symbolic use of words than that found in
animals trained by other methods. In addition, because these chimpanzees
were taught comprehension skills, they were able to communicate with one
another and not just with the experimenters. Sherman and Austin could use
their symbols to tell each other things that could not be conveyed by sim-
ple glances or by pointing. For example, they could describe foods they had
seen in another room, or the types of tools they needed to solve a problem.
was no evidence that they were intentionally signing to each other or that
Although other apes had been reported to sign in each other's presence, there
they responded to each other's signs.
could
using words only to obtain rewards.
176
ISSUE 8 / Can Apes Learn Language?
you
Sun
a teacher, or limited to simple requests.
10
vocabulary
FEBRUARY
Most important, Sherman and Austin began to show an aspect of sym-
bol usage that they had not been taught; they used symbols to say what they
were going to do before they did it. Symbol use by other apes had not included
descriptions of intended actions; rather, communications had been begun by
Sherman and Austin also began to use symbols to share information
about objects that were not present and they passed a particularly demand-
could be answered only if they knew what each symbol represented. For exam-
ing test, which required them to look at symbols and answer questions that
ple, they could look at printed lexigram symbols such as 'key', 'lever', 'stick',
'wrench', 'apple', 'banana', 'pineapple' and 'juice', and state whether each lexi-
gram belonged to the class of 'food' words or 'tool' words. They could do this
without ever being told whether these lexigram symbols should be classified
as foods or tools. These findings were important, because they revealed that by
using symbols an ape can describe what it is about to do.
How Similar Is Ape Language
to Human Language?
Even though it was generally agreed that apes could do something far more
complex than most other animals, there still remained much disagreement as
to whether ape's symbols were identical to human symbols. This uncertainty
arose for two reasons: apes did not acquire words in the same manner as
children-that is, by observing others use them; and apes did not appear to
use true syntactical rules to construct multiple-word utterances.
The first of these differences between ape and child has recently been
challenged by a young pygmy chimpanzee or bonobo named Kanzi. Most pre-
vious studies had focused on common chimpanzees because pygmy chimpan-
zees are very rare (they are in great danger of having their habitat destroyed in
the coming decade and have no protected parks
In contrast to other apes, Kanzi learned symbols simply by observing
human beings point to them while speaking to him. He did not need to have
his arms placed in position, or to be rewarded for using a correct symbol. More
important, he did not need to be taught to comprehend symbols or taught
that symbols could be used for absent objects as well as those present. Kanzi
spontaneously used symbols to announce his actions or intentions and, if his
meaning was ambiguous, he often invented gestures to clarify it, as young
children do.
YES / E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh
177
Unlike previous apes reared as human children, Kanzi was reared in a
semi-natural woodland. Although he could not produce speech, he under-
stood much of what was said to him. He could appropriately carry out novel
1 show your new toy to Kelly?' and 'Would you give Panzee some of your
melon?'. There appeared to be no limit to the number of sentences that
Kanzi could understand as long as the words in the sentences were in his
During the first 3 or 4 years of his life, Kanzi's comprehension of spoken
sentences was limited to things that he heard often. However, when he was
For example, the first time he heard someone talk about throwing a ball in the
5 years old, he began to respond to novel sentences upon first hearing them.
river, he suddenly turned and threw his ball right in the water, even though
he had never done this before. Similarly, when someone suggested, for fun,
that he might then try to throw a potato at a turtle that was nearby, he found
a potato and tossed it at the turtle. To be certain that Kanzi was not being
somehow 'cued' inadvertently by people, he was tested with headphones. In
this test he had to listen to a word and point to a picture of the word that he
heard. Kanzi did this easily, the first time he took the test.
About this time, Kanzi also began to combine symbols. Unlike other
apes, he did not combine symbols ungrammatically to get the experimenter
to give something that was purposefully being held back. Kanzi's combina-
tions had a primitive English word order and conveyed novel information.
For example, he formed utterances such as “Ball go group room' to say that he
wanted to play with a specific ball—the one he had seen in the group room
on the previous day. Because the experimenter was not attempting to get
Kanzi to say this, and was indeed far from the group room, such sentence
conveyed something that only Kanzi—not the experimenter-knew before
Kanzi spoke.
Thus Kanzi's combinations differed from those of other apes in that they
often referred to things or events that were absent and were known only to
Kanzi, they contained a primitive grammar and were not imitations of the
experimenter. Nor did the experimenter ask rhetorical questions such as 'What
is this? to elicit them, Kanzi's combinations include sentences such as 'Tickle
bite'
, 'Keep-way balloon' and 'Coke chase'. As almost nothing is yet known
of how pygmy chimpanzees communicate, they could use a form of simple
language in the wild. Kanzi understands spoken English words, so the ability
that is reflected in language comprehension is probably an older evolutionary
adaptation than is the ability to talk.
that only humans can talk and think. Certainly, there is now no doubt that
Studying ape language presents a serious challenge to the long-held view
apes communicate in much more complex and abstract ways than dogs, cats
and other familiar animals. Similarly, apes that have learned some language
skills are also able to do some remarkable non-linguistic tasks. For example,
they can recognise themselves on television and even determine whether an
Image is taped or live. They can also play video games, using a joystick to catch
Kanzi learned words by listening to speech. He first comprehended cer-
tain spoken words, then learned to read the lexigram symbols
. This was possi-
ble because his caretakers pointed to these symbols as they spoke. For example,
ran across wild strawberries growing in the woods. He soon became able to
lead people to strawberries whenever they asked him to do so. He similarly
learned the spoken names of many other foods that grew outdoors, such as
wild grapes, honeysuckle, privet berries, blackberries and mushrooms, and
could take people to any of these foods upon spoken request.
and trap a video villain.
178
ISSUE 8 / Can Apes Learn Language?
NO
Joel Wallman
talents for language and communication of our closest relatives. Sharing
Scientists have only just begun to discover ways of tapping the hidden
98 per cent of their DNA with human beings, it has long been wondered why
African apes seem so much like us at a biological level, but so different when
it comes to behaviour. Ape-language studies continue to reveal that apes are
Aping Language
Sat Sun
more like us than we ever imagined.
9/10
Experiment
FEBRUARY
philosophers.
periments carried out over the past two decades ... attempted to impart
a language, either natural or invented, to an ape. The debate engendered by
these projects has been of interest-consuming for some, passing for others-
nature, among them anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, biologists, and
to all of those whose concerns include the enduring questions of human
An adequate treatment of the linguistic capabilities of apes entails consi-
deration of a number of related issues, each of which is an interesting problem
ile its own right. Continuities in primate mentality, the relationship between
language and thought in the individual and in the species, and the origin of
language ... are themes that ... recur throughout this [debate).
[None of the ape-language projects succeeded, despite employing
years of tutelage far more intense than that experienced by most children, in
implanting in an ape a capacity for language equal to that of a young child, let
alone an adult. ...
Why the Ape-Language Controversy
Is a Controversy
All scientific arguments have in common at least these elements: (1) a mini-
mum of two positions regarding the subject in dispute, positions generally
held to be irreconcilable, and (2) an intensification of the normal emotional
investment of the scientist in his or her position, due in some measure to the
contending itself but perhaps also related to the ideological significance of the
subject within the larger society. If, in addition, the argument includes sugges-
tions of fraudulent or
quasi-fraudulent procedures, the disagreement becomes
a controversy. To the extent that this is an accurate characterization of scien-
tific controversies, the ape-language debate is an exemplary one.
The radical opposition of opinion about the achievement of the various
ape-language projects is well conveyed by the following quotations:
(Washoe) learned a natural human language and her early utterances
were highly similar to, perhaps indistinguishable from the early utter-
ances of human children. (Gardner and Gardner 1978, p. 73)
From Aping Language by Joel Wallman (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Copyright © 1992
by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.
179
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