Animals and Language Learning

Presented by

Aswandi
Alpino
Mustathira
 Animals and Language Learning
 Do animals have language?
 Do they use the language to communicate?
 Can we teach animals some sort of human
language?
 If they cannot speak human language, would
this mean that they are lacking in intelligence,
or they lack a specific innate language ability?
 5.1 Teaching Speech to Apes

5.1.1. The first Scientific Attempt: with an

orangutan (furness,1916)

 The researcher taught an orangutan to speak.

 It had only learned to say, “papa” and “cup”
 After four months, the project ended because
the animal died with a high fever.
 5.1.2. Gua: the chimp raised with a human “sibling”

( Winthrop Kellog & Luella kellog, 1968)

 The researchers taught the chimp in the same way that their

own son, Donald.

 The result: They have the same score on the problem-solving

tests and tests of mental ability

 After16 month, The researchers found that Gua learned to

respond to 95 spoken words, phrases, and sentences. Ex: “Lie

down”, “don’t touch”, etc.

5.1.3. Viki: Another chimp raised in a human
household (Cathy and Keith Hayes, 1951)
 The researchers treated viki as a full member of
the family.

 Viki was given pronunciation training, but she

had only learned to utter four words: ‘mama’,
‘papa’, ‘up’ and ‘cup’.

 The discripancy was Gua learning so much

than Viki.
 5.2. Teaching sign Language to the chimpanzee, gorila and Orangutan

5.2.1. Washoe: The First Signing Chimp

(Allen and beatrice Gardner 1969,1975).

 The researchers taught the washoe a simplified form of

American Sign Language (ASL)
 She learned 130 signs and displayed two- and three word
utterances, such as ‘open food drink’ when she wanted
something out of the refrigator.
 Despite the many years of training, Washoe could not advance
beyond an elementary level of Human achievement.
5.2.2. Louis, Son of Washoe, and a community of
signing Chimps.
(Roger and Debby Fouts, 1989)

 Their focus is in looking at how language may or

may not develop in social context.
 They emphasize on creating the best environment
for the chimpanzees to develop conversations and
not on teaching them syntax.
 They believe that the chimpanzee can advance,
once given a start, without intervention of
humans.
5.2.3. Nim Chimpsky and the Chimskyan Revolution
(Terrace, 1979b; Terrace, Petitio, Sanders, & Bever,1979)

 Like the Gardness, Terrace used a modified form of American Sign

Language for teaching language to Nim.
 Terrace conclude that Nim:
 Knowing that he had to make signs to get what he wanted.
 Would take what the teacher signed
 Give appearance of producing structured two- or three-word
utterances, without producing a consistent subject-verb or verb-
subject word order.
5.2.4. Teaching Sign Language to Koko, the Gorila
(Francine Patterson, 1978a, 1978b, 1980)

 Koko has been trained in American Sign

Language.
 She has received speech input from her trainers as
well as sign.
 After 4.5 years she had learned 132 sign words,
after 10 more years that total came to 500 or more.
But,It is lower than 3 year-old human child whose
vocabulary thousands.
5.2.5. Teaching Language to Chantek, the orangutan
(Miles, 1983,1990)

 He chose orangutan because they generally score

higher on cognitive tests than Gorillas or
chimpanzees.
 He did not just train Chantek to use signs but also
immersed her in a human cultural environment to
learn appropriate ways for behaviour and
interaction.
 After seven years, chantek learned to use a
vocabulary of 140 signs which signify objects,
actions, proper names, attributives, locatives and
pronouns.
 5.3 Teaching Artificial languages to Chimpanzees
5.3.1. Lana, the Computer Chimp
(The Rumbaughs, 1977)
 They taught Lana a simple artificial language called
Yerkish.
 The language consisted of seven colours and nine
geometrical shapes which represented mainly
objects and actions.
 Lana learned hundreds of sentences in this fashion.
 Sue Savage-rumbaughs believes that apes have but
a limited ability for language acquisition.
5.3.2. sarah: The Magnetic Plastic token Chimp
(David Premack,1970,1971, 1976)

 He gave sarah 130 plastic tokens with magnets so

that they could be manipulated easily by her and
others. The tokens for names of colours, actions,
fruites and some function such as questions.
 They found that chimps are intelegent creatures.
5.3.3. Kanzi a pygmy Chimp produces synthesized
speech (rumbaugh, McDonald, sevcik,, Hopkins
& Rubert, 1986)

 The researcher believe that a pygmy chimp more

similar to humans than to other apes.
 In their training the researches would point to a
keyboard and speak in english to objects, actions,
locations that were of interest to the chimps.
5.4. Teaching language to Dolphins

5.4.1. Elvar: The whistling Dolphin

(Lilly,1962,1965)

 The researcher tried to teach a dolphin to force air

through its blow-hole in such a way that it would
allow the dolphin to imitate human speech sound.
 Lilly claimed that elvar interchanged human sounds
with dolphin sounds as he were attempiting to
translate
5.4.2. Akeakamai and phoenix. Learning artificial
Languages through Sight and Sound
(Herman & Wolz,1984)

 They trained a bottlenose dolphin to mimic computer-

generated sounds.
 The dolphin could learn new whistle and apply this
whistle to the naming of objects such as ‘ball’, ‘hoop’,
and ‘frisbee’.
 The researchers conducted experiments using two
different types of artifial languages, one involving
sounds, the other involving visual gestures,, i.e. Signs.
 Herman’s research is one of the most scientific and
methodologically reliable on the learning of language
by animals.
Teaching spoken English to an African Grey
Parrot
Can parrot learn language ? The answer is not but based
on the Pepperberg’s fascinating research( 1987,
1993;Pepperrberg and Kozak ,1986) has proven that
our assumption is wrong. He did a research to a male
African Grey parrot named Alex. Alex can show an
excellent competence by identify color and shape and
material more than 100 objects. Even Alex made
mistake but it almost like the human ‘s mistake for
instance he produce the word box by bock.
Alex has more talent then Apes and Dolphin she has
low level of syntax then them.
 Animal Communication in the Wild

Animal communicate through a wide variety of

means like sound, smell and visual signal.
5.6.1 Vervet monkey
The most complex type of communication in the
wild is the higher primate , Vervet monkey.
(Cheney and Sayfarth1982,1990;satfarth,Cheney
and Marler 1980)report that Vervet monkey
has certain grunts to inform some dangers or
situation in the sky ,eagle, from the bushes
,Snake, and on the ground ,Leopard
5.6.2.Turn-Taking in Sound-Making
In making communication, animal practice
natural one like done by human being . For
instance a monkey get the change to
communicate after his friend finish. This
situation also found in the birds’ life.
 5.6.3. Bird Calls
The calls of bird has many purposes , they are:
1. Giving information of it’s readiness to mate

2. Giving alarm to prevent it’s territory

Based on the researcher that the calls of bird is

innate, moreover a bird can imitate the human
sound even it can not used it appropriately
based on the context. For instance ,hello , how
are you, get away from there.
5.6.4. Honey Bees The Information Dance

There are many interesting things from the way of

bees’ communication between them, they are:
1. They use vision and touch to inform and
understand the message from other by touching
their friends by their own antennae.
2. They instruct to their friend to go back to their hive
by using specific movement, dance. Except for the
bees that have a task to find food
3. Giving information about a special nectar source or
even they can tell to their friend the distant of the
nectar from them.
 5.6.5. Reasoning and Consciousness In Bees and
Animal

Based on the Princeton University ethologist James

Gould(1986,1988; gould & gould, 1988 ) thatcertain bees
not only have an ability to inform that there is a nectar
near them but they also can anticipate the new area of
food and fly to keep it until their friends come to get. It
means that the bees have an ability to make a map in
their mind.
In other words we can said that the bees and other animal
,Bat, do thing consciously and do think to act something.
(Griffin, 1992).He said that to know animal’s behaviour we
must learn them so that we can understand the
development of our evolution of our consciousness and
thinking.
 5.7 conclusion
5.7.1 can Animal Communication be regarded as
language
We can say no, why? It can be answered through their
communications ‘characters. Human communicate
with each other creatively. They can create any
variation of languages .On the other hand animal
can communicate quite specific and stereotype.
They can communicate just for the object trained to
them. The study of Washoe,Sarah,Lana, Koko, Kanzi
, the dolphin and Alex demonstrate only a minimal
degree of achievement.
 5.7.2. The Puzzle :seemingly Highly
Intelligent Animals Learn Little Language
The research done on the animal shows that animal only have
rudimentary language ability, whether in the wild or
through training. Even the Apes is creative and inventive to
solve the problem than other animals but they can not learn
more about what is taught to them. On the other children
can learn more with all its’ complexity (Wolfgang Cohler).
There are two types of explanation about the acquisition of
language between animal and human:
1. Pro intelligent theories that animal lack of certain intelligent
to learn language.(Pieget)
2. Innatists ( Chomsky) :animal born without a special language
ability. Animal don’t have the capacity of understanding the
grammar of the language.