ANIMALS AND LANGUAGE LEARNING

Presented by

Vivi Rizqiyah
Liliani Maulidia
Ayu Wulandari

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, dont touch, etc.

5.1.3. Viki: Another chimp raised in a human

(Cathy and Keith Hayes, 1951)

household

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

Chimps.
(Roger and Debby Fouts, 1989)

of signing

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.

5.2.4. 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 yearold 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

through Sight and Sound
(Herman & Wolz,1984)

Languages

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.
Hermans 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 Pepperbergs 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.

5.6.2.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 its readiness to mate

2.

Giving alarm to prevent its 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.

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 animals
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 aanswered throught their
communications characters.Human communicate
with each other creatively. They can create any
variation of languages .On the other hand animal can
communicate quite spesific 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 dont have the capacity of understanding the
grammar of the language.