Language in Child and Chimp?

Recent successes teaching chimpanzees to engage in symbolic communication have again brought into question the Cartesian supposition that language is uniquely possessed by homo sapiens. Despite the very remarkable achievements of Washoe and Sarah, an objective comparison of these chimps' linguistic performances with those of a typical 3-year-old child provides scant evidence for rejecting Descartes' view. An organism uses human language if and only if it uses structures characteristic of those languages. The ability of apes or even 2-yearolds to communicate and use simple names is not sufficient reason to attribute the use of human language to them. The creative or projective aspect of human language cannot be overlooked. Efforts to explain the language deficits of apes in terms of impoverished language experience, anatomical deficits, or cognitive-structure differences are not convincing. Today one can scarcely read a daily newspaper or news magazine without encountering a feature extolling the latest linguistic accomplishments of one or another ape. Contemporary introductory psychology textbooks may devote as much space to the achievements of the likes of Sarah and Washoe as they do the language development of children. With increasing frequency, widely read journals such as Science publish reports of the transmutation of base primates into noble ones. It is no wonder there is a growing belief among students and scientists alike that modern behavioral science has in fact succeeded in teaching human language to apes. What Accounts for Our Fascination with This Issue? The answers to this question are varied. Many people have an intrinsic interest in the antics of apes whether in the zoo, laboratory, or circus. The ancients speculated about the possibility of language in animals and the origin of our own. One recent writer (Linden, 1975) attributes cosmic ecological significance to the current revival of an old issue. Rene Descartes, as is well known, argues in the 17 century that the use of language was the critical feature of homo sapiens which distinguished it from the beasts: For it is a very remarkable thing that there are no men, not even the insane, so dull and stupid that they cannot put words together in a manner to convey their thoughts. On the contrary, there is no other animal however perfect and fortunately situated it may be, that can do the same. And this is not because they lack the organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can pronounce words as well as we can, and nevertheless cannot speak as we do, that is, in showing that they think what they are saying. ______________________________________________________________________________ Portions of this article were presented to the University of New Hampshire Linguistics Group. The author, a homo sapiens, thanks James R. Davis and William Woodward for their comments on a previous draft of this article and is indebted to the useful comments of an anonymous reviewer. Requests for reprints should be sent to John Limber, Psychology Department, University of New Language in Child and Chimp? 2 On the other hand, even those men born deaf and dumb, lacking the organs which others make use of in speaking, and at least as badly off as the animals in this respect, usually invent for themselves some signs by which they make themselves understood. And this proves not merely animals have less reason than men but that they have none at all, for we see that very little is needed to talk. (Descartes, 1637/1960, p. 42) Our exclusive possession of language has always played a primary role in our conception of ourselves in relation to other species. From another indirectly related perspective, behaviorists in the 20 century see the success in teaching apes human language as a means of vindicating their long-espoused, contentfree, species-nonspecific learning principles. Julian La Mettrie, an 18-century physician, foreshadowed the behaviorist position in his then-infamous L'Homme Machine, which was a rejection of Cartesian dualism. First, he argued that language was not the unique feature of man that Descartes claimed. La Mettrie observed that men and animals have at least emotional language in common: "all of the expressions of pain, sadness, aversion, fear, audacity, submission, anger, pleasure, joy, tenderness, etc." Second, he suggested that whatever linguistic deficits animals suffered might be just a matter of impoverished environment, lack of proper training, or both. Could not the device which opens the Eustachian canal of the deaf, open that of the apes? Might not a happy desire to imitate the master's pronunciation liberate the organs of speech in animals that imitate so many other signs with such skill and intelligence? Not only do I defy anyone to name any really conclusive experiment which proves my view impossible and absurd; but such is the likeness of the structure and function of the ape to ours that I have little doubt that if this animal were properly trained he might at least be taught to pronounce, and consequently to know a language. Then he would, no longer be a wild man, but he would be a perfect man, a little gentleman, with as much matter of muscle as we have, for thinking and profiting by his education. (La Mettrie, quoted in Gunderson, 1971. p. 30) La Mettrie clearly anticipated contemporary behaviorists in their stress on the continuity across species and in their efforts to explain the linguistic deficits of apes in terms of experiential