Presented by
Aswandi Alpino Mustathira
Do animals have language? Do they use the language l anguage to communicate? Can we teach animals some sort of human language? If they cannot speak human language, would this mean that they are lacking l acking in intelligence, or they lack a specific innate language ability?
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, ´papaµ and ´cupµ After four months, the project ended because the animal died with a high fever.
5.1.2. Gua: the chimp raised with a human ´siblingµ
( 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 downµ, ´don·t touchµ, 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.
5.2.1. 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
achievement.
an
elementary
level
of
Human
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 synta x. 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 sub ject-verb or verbsub ject 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 ob jects, actions, proper names, attributives, locatives and pronouns.
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 o b jects, 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 o b jects such as ¶ ball·, ¶hoop·, and ¶frisbee·. The researchers conducted e xperiments 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.
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 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
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 .
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 .
There are many interesting things from the way of bees· communication between them, they are: They use vision and touch to inform and 1. 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 Giving information about a special nectar source or 3. even they can tell to their friend the distant of the nectar from them.
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.
5.7.1 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.
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 .
