ANIMAL AND LANGUAGE LEARNING Human beings have a language, but what about animals?

Do apes, dolphins and other creatures have language and use their language to communicate to the others? Can we teach them our language? In this chapter we will see that the experiments how to teach animal a language. 5.1 Teaching Speech to Apes a. The First Scientific Attempt with Orang Utan The first attempt to teaching language to an Apes was doing in 1916. The experiments was in USA, they teach an orang utan to speak. But the project ended by tragedy, when that animal died cause high fever while repeating two words that it had to learned;papa and cup. b. Gua : The Chimp Raised with a Human Sibling Winthrop and Kellogg raised a female chimp names Gua along with their own son, Donald. Their ideas was given the chimp the same input and social interaction as human child, the chimp would learn language with the same way as Donald. For 9 months they raised together, Kellogg noted that Gua demonstrated an exceptional ability to learn by imitation but that boy was more versatile and continuous in his learning. Kellogg wanted to see if Gua could learn language as ordinary human children do, where language training is not given. Gua did not learn to say any words were repeated numerous times. Gua could respond 95 words, phrases, and sentence, such as; Give it to Donald, Lie Down,Dont touch. The experiment was terminated when the researcher foubd that Donald was picking up too much chimp type behavior. c. Viki : Another Chimp Raised in a Human Household Another of home rearing project was Viki a baby female chimpanzee from infaney. Like Gua, Viki was treated as a full member of a family, she ate her meals at the table, played games at home, and went outings. Unlike Gua, Viki was given special speech training in pronunciation , after 3 years Viki only learned to utter four words;mama,papa,up and cup. She obey commands Go to your room, Go Outside, and Go upstairs without error. This result was surprising compared to much longer list items that Gua could understand. 5.2 Teaching Sign Language to the Chimpanzee, Gorila and Orangutan a. Washoe : The First Signing Chimp Washoe was the first chimp to teach sign language. The researcher reasoned that any attempt to teach chimps speaks was doomed because of the simple fact that chimps do not posses the necessary vocal apparatus for human speech. They trained Washoe a simplified form of American Sign Language (ASL). Washoe first sign was open, after about 4 years Washoe learned 130 sign languages. b. Loulis, Son of Washoe, Community of Signing Chimp Washoe was teaching Sign Language to Loulis such as Hurry and Gimme (give me). The researcher also teach Loulis how to using tools like human behavior. Fouts also observed that Loulis making some two sign combination, such as hurry-gimme. This project finish when Loulis died. c. Nim Chimpsky and The Chimpskyn Revolution Like Gardnes, Terrace used a modified form of ASL for teaching Nim. Nim could used two, three and four sign sequences are more drink, tickle Nim, banana Nim eat, banana eat Nim. After studying Terrace conclude that Nim, knowing that he had to make sign in order to get what he wanted.

d. Teaching Sign Language to Koko, the Gorilla Koko born in 1971, unlike Gua Koko received speech input from her trainer as well as sign. Teaching has consisted of 10 hours per day of sign and speech exposure, with help in molding the hand for sign making. One interesting was that Koko was productive in her sign language. Koko could make new word to describe new object by combining previously known once. i.e created eye-hat for mask, white tiger for a toy zebra, finger bracelet for ring, and bottle-match for lighter. After 4,5 years Koko had learned 132 sign words, after 10 more years that total become 500 or more,it is impressed compared to the achievements of the chimp, it is below the level though of that of 3 years old human child. As far as speech is concerned, it is claimed that Koko is able to comprehend in speech whatever she can understand in sign. Patterson also reports that Koko uses her sign for such purposes as to swear, lie, Joke,rhyme. Koko also can communicate for example in sign You remember what you had for breakfast? she replied in sign: yes, cake. On tape Koko also used sign to tell Patterson that someone was hiding behind a tree. Such as events contradict with Terrace claim that Apes will not attempt to give names things, another Terraces claim, that apes will not attempts to give names to object their own. e. Teaching Sign Language to Chantek, the Orangutan In 1970 Milrs started to teach ASL to male orang utan named Chantek. An orang utan was chosen for this research because they generaly score higher on cognitive test than go gorillas or chimpanzee. Miles project was differed from others which have focused on language, she more concerned with the cognitive and communicative processes that make underlie language development. After 7 years of interaction with his caregivers, Chantek learned to use a vocabulary of 140 sign which signify objects, actions, proper names, attributes, locatives, and pronouns. Miles state that in the second month of training Chantek began to combine sign into sequences spontaneously verb give. Chantek was more likely named a physical object first (object+give) if the object does not present i.e banana give. By 8 years and 3 months of age, Chantek was inventing different sign, including no+teeth to indicate that he would not use his teeth during rough play and eye+drink for the contact lens solution used by his caregivers. Chantek acquired vocabulary items but like the other apes, little syntax. 5.3Teaching Artificial Language to Chimpanzee a. Lana ; The computer Chimp The Rambaughs taught the chimp Lana a simple artificial language called Yerkish. The language consist of seven colours and nine geometrical shape which represented mainly objects and actions. These items were displayed on large keyboard and the keyboard was connected to a computer in another room. Lana had to press certain keys in the right sequences to make requests and consequently receive desired items, ie please machine give milk or please Tim give ball. Lana learned hundred of sentence in this fashion. She had names for people, food, objects, and even a special phrase. Unfortunately, Lanas sentence were not created according to rule but were learned by rote, in a similar way to memorizing important sentence. Rambaughs believes that apes have a limited ability for language acquisition. She says it is not likely that chimps might be able to talk about their dreams or tell us about how it feels to be a chimp.

b. Sarah ; The Magnetic Plastic Token Chimp University of Pennsylvania involving a chimp by name of Sarag. Rather than using sign language or electronic keyboard, Premarcks (1970,1971,1976) gave Srah 130 plastic tokens with magnets so they could be manipulated easily by her an otherd. These included token for the names of colours such as red and blue for different fruits such as banana,peach and action such as wash,cut, take. The tokens would adhere to a metallic board. Premarck research with Sarah make it clear that chimps are intelligent creatures. Additionally Sarah Succeeded in handling sentence involving connective such as the if them conditional, If Mary gibe banana Debby then Sarah insert Chocolate dish (if Mary gives Debby a banana, then Sarah sould put the chocolate in the dish) c. Kanzi ; a Pygmy Chimp Produce Synthesized Speech The researcher choose A Pygmy chimpanzee or bonobo because they believed the bonobo to be a better candidate for language research than the other apes which researcher had used. Thus was that bonobo male chimp, Kanzi. In their training the researcher would point to a keyboard and speak in Engliah in reference to objects, actions, locations, that were to interest the chimp. The lexigrams (visual word symbol) on the keyboard were made up of arbitrary geometrical symbols, each matching an object, action, or location. When touched, the lexigrams on the computer keyboard would produce synthesized English speech sound for a particular word. Gesture and some sign language were not thought but allowed to develop spontaneously. Greenfield and Rambaugh say that Kanzy in 5 years old learned over a period of five months to use grammar equivalent to that of a 2 years old human child. It seems there fore the researcher compare Kanzy with human child it cannot be concluded that Kanzi has demonstrated any greater acquisition of language than the apes on other language study. 5.4 Teching Language to Dolpins a. Elvar: The whistling Dolphin In one of the first studies, Lilly (1962, 1965) tried to reach a dolphin to force air through its blow-hole in such a way that it would allow the dolphin to imitate human speech sounds. A young approximations of the word squirt, which Lilly had been trying to reach him to pronounce. b. Akeamai and Phoenix; Learning Artificial Languages through sigh and sound Herman and his associates (Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984) conducted experiments using two different types of artificial languages, one involving sounds, the other involving visual gestures, i.e. signs. This was done not only to see if the animal could learn a human-created language system, but also todiscover more about the cognitive abilities of dolphins. Each dolphin learned one of the two artificial languages. Akea was taught the gesture-based language, while Phoenix was taught the sound-based language. The visual languages of gestures, invented by Herman and his colleagues, involved the used of the trainers arms and hands. To avoid the unconscious giving of helpful cues to the dolphins, the trainers wore opaque goggles so that the dolphins could not see their eyes. A proper test for grammatical knowledge must take this phenomenon into account. The dolphins with commands involving semantically reversible structures. Have gave them, for example, both pipe hoop fetch (Take the hoop to the pipe) and hoop pipe fetch (Take the pipe to the hoop). The rule was : Untransportable Object + Transportable Object + Action.

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Teaching Spoken English to an Affrican Grey Parrot Peperberg (Pepperberg, 1987, 1993 ; Pepperberg & Kozak, 1986) has worked with a male African Grey Parrot, which (whom?!) she calls Alex. She use the speech modebecause of the parrots excellent vocal and hearing abilities. Furthermore he can identify them on the basis of seven colours (green, red, blue, yellow, grey, purple, and orange (although grey and green are sometimes indistinguishable of Alexs pronunciation of green as gree). Animal Communication in the Wild Visual signal may, for example, be used by dogs to threaten or attract ; the baring of teeth and tail-wagging, respectively, serve to convey such intentions. a. Vervet Monkeys Thus, while one type of grunt indicates (1a) Beware, here comes an eagle!, another type of grunt indicates (2a) Beware, here comes a leopard!, while still another means (3a) Beware, here comes a snake! However, these grunts could just as well be interpreted as meaning. Whatever the case, the basic fact remains : vervet monkeys use different grunts to signal different predators. b. Turn-Taking in Sound-Making Animals have been found to use some human linguistic phenomena in natural communication (Snowden, 1993). For example, monkeys take turns in their communication (one monkey waits for the other to finish before making sounds). Communications of birds is often similarly governed. c. Bird Calls As researchers have determined.the bird calls and songs of particular species are largely innate, although there are certain aspects of calls and songs which will not develop unless the young bird is exposed to the voice of the adult bird. d. Honey Bees: The Information Dance A bee reporting back to the hive will go through a series of movements, akind of dance, to tell other bees if a nectar source is near or distant, and, moreover, if it is distant, just how far away and in what direction. Other bees can get the message not only by seeing these movements but by touching, that is, by approaching the scout bee and feeling its movements with their own antennae. e. Reasoning and Consciousness in Bees and Animals ? The bees could anticipate the new location of the food. Gould found that some of the bees would fly past him to the next place and be waiting for him when he arrived! One cannot help but wonder if the bees are creating maps in their minds.

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