Animals and

Language Learning

Muhammad Arfan Darampalo

• Furness was the earliest-known scientific attempt at teaching

Gua Viki
 Gua
• The two scientists (Luella and Winthrop
Kellogg) raised an infant chimpanzee,
together with their baby son.
• Their idea: Giving the chimpanzee the
same input and social interaction as a
human child
• Gua reported to be able to understand 95
spoken words, phrases, and sentences but
did not say any of them
• The experiment was terminated because
Donald was picking up too much
chimpanzee-type behavior
 Viki
• Viki was reared by Catherine and
Keith Hayes in their own home
• They spent five years to get Viki say
English words by trying to shape her
mouth as she produced sounds.
• She produces some words rather
poorly articulated versions of
‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘up’, and ‘cup’.
In the two studies:
 Gua learning so much more than Viki
 In both studies speech comprehension was well in advance of
speech production, a fact that coincides with that of the
human child language learner.
• Teaching sign language to the chimpanzee, gorilla
and orangutan
• Learned to use American Sign Washoe
Language
• Learned about vocabulary of about
130 signs
• She could not advance beyond an
elementary level of human
achievement.
 Loulis
• Learned sign language from Washoe
• However, Wshoe’s signs seem not to
have been picked up by chimps other
than Loulis, who unfortunately died
when still very young.
 Nim
• Was taught American Sign Language
• Nim produced a large number of single-
word signs, developed two-word
combinations such as ‘more drink’, and
‘banana me eat banana’ and used in
appropriate circumstances.
 Koko
• Dr. Francine Patterson taught Koko ASL
• Koko received speech input from her trainers
as well as sign.
• Koko was productive in her sign language.
• Koko is friendly and tries to start up sign
language conversations with strangers.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/gorillas-koko-sign-language-
culture-animals/
 Chantek
• Miles started to teach ASL to Chantek
in the late 1970
• No attempt was made to rise Chantek
like a human child.
• Chantek learned to use a vocabulary
of 140 signs.
• Chantek also began to combine signs
into sequences spontaneously.
• Overall, Chantek acquired vocabulary
items but, like the other apes, little
syntax.
• Teaching artificial language to chimpanzees
• Was taught Yerkish which consists of a Lana
set of symbols on a large keyboard linked
to a computer.
• Lana had to press certain keys in the
right sequence to make requests and
consequently receive desired items.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiWD
KXRzSmU
• Sarah was taught to use plastic Sarah
shapes which represent words to
communicate with human.
• Premach gave Sarah 130 plastic
tokens with magnets so that they
could be manipulated easily by her
and others.
• A pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo Kanzi
• To be more similar to humans that to
other apes in terms of evolution and
with respect to communicative
behaviour such as aye contact, gesture,
and vocalization.
Akeakamai and Phoenix
• In 1979, a teaching programme was begun with two
dolphins, named Phoenix and Akeakamai by Herman and his
assistant.
• Each Dolphin was taught a vocabulary of about 30 words.
• Trainer places and moves his or her arms in different positions as in a
sort of semaphore signal system. The commands consisted of two to
five-word sequences, with each command constructed on the basis of
object and action words. Thus, ‘window tail touch’ is to be interpreted
as ‘Touch a window with your tail’.
• Herman presented the dolphins with commands involving semantically
reversible structures. For example, both ‘pipe hoop fetch’ (Take the
hoop to the pipe) and ‘hoop pipe fetch’ (Take the pipe to the hoop).
Since the dolphins generally respond appropriately to both commands,
it can be concluded that the dolphins had acquired a syntactic structure
that involved relational and prepositional functions.
• Herman is able to deflect any criticism that the dolphins are merely
carrying out the same sort of fixed stimulus–response type of shaped
behaviour that dolphins and whales in marine parks are trained to do.
Alex, the African grey parrot
• A scientist, named Pepperberg has worked with a male
African Grey parrot that she calls Alex.
• Alex’s accomplishments are admirable, especially with his
recognition of abstract categories, he has surpassed aspects
of language knowledge that the apes and even the dolphins
have demonstrated. Eventhough, he has not yet reached the
level of syntax that the dolphins have mastered.
Rico, a border collie
• Rico is a 9 1/2-year-old border collie who has learned to
understand more than 200 words for different objects, such
as toys and balls, that have been said to him (Kaminski et al.,
2004).
• He can learn a new word after being shown an unfamiliar
object for just once. No syntax, but still, Rico’s large
vocabulary is greater than a lot of the animals who have
been given language instruction.
Conclusion
• The research with animals clearly shows that animals have
only a rudimentary language ability.
• Contemporary theorists basically offer two types of
explanations on the issue of animals vs. humans in the
acquisition of language.
• Whether animals lack intelligence as the Empiricists say, or
lack a special language ability as the Rationalists say, it
seems evident that animals do not have much of a capacity
for a grammar-based language.
QUESTION?