Animal and Human Language 4

Animal and Human Language 4 G. Yule - By: Akram Hanno (LEO)
Talking to animals
#If these five properties of human language make it such a unique communication system, quite different from the communication systems of other creatures, then it would seem extremely unlikely that other creatures would be able to understand it.
#Riders can say Whoa to horses and they stop (or so it seems), we can say Heel to dogs and they will follow at heel (well, sometimes), and a variety of circus animals go Up, Down and Roll over in response to spoken commands.
Should we treat these examples as evidence that non-humans can understand human language?
Probably not.
#The standard explanation is that the animal produces a particular behavior in response to a particular sound-stimulus or ‘noise’, but does not actually ‘understand’ what the words in the noise mean.
#If it seems difficult to conceive of animals understanding human language, then it appears to be even less likely that an animal would be capable of producing human language. After all, we do not generally observe animals of one species learning to produce the signals of another species.
#You could keep your horse in a field of cows for years, but it still won’t say Moo.
#But perhaps a puppy is a poor example. Wouldn’t it be better to work with a closer relative such as a chimpanzee?
Chimpanzees and language
The idea of raising a chimp and a child together may seem like a nightmare, but this is basically what was done in an early attempt to teach a chimpanzee to use human language.
In the 1930s, two scientists (Luella and Winthrop Kellogg) reported on their experience of raising an infant chimpanzee together with their baby son.
The chimpanzee, called Gua, was reported to be able to understand about a hundred words, but did not ‘say’ any of them.
#In retrospect, this was a remarkable achievement since it has become clear that non-human primates do not actually have a physically structured vocal tract which is suitable for articulating the sounds used in speech.
#Apes and gorillas can, like chimpanzees, communicate with a wide range of vocal calls, but they just can’t make human speech sounds.

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