Monkeying Around: The Linguistic Studies of Primates

Primates are closely related to human beings and provide us great insights into what life would have been like for our hominid (human) ancestors, specifically species in the Australopithecus and Homo genera.  As such primate studies are primarily in the realm of physical anthropology, but today’s blog post will focus on primate studies not from a physical anthropological perspective but from a linguistic anthropological one.  Linguistic anthropologists have dabbled in primate studies in order to gain a better understanding of how language may have developed among our early hominid ancestors and from there have learned about what specifically makes our human language and means of communication so unique from other forms of communication among various animal species, specifically our primate cousins.  This blog post will discuss some of those studies and the information gleaned from them.

Studies of primates have demonstrated that primates can indeed communicate, although not in the same capacities as we, humans, can and do.  Primates communicate in a system of call systems, which are a series of sounds that vary in duration and intensity and are associated with specific environmental stimuli.  These sounds serve the purpose of primates by informing them of potential resources and dangers that individuals or groups may encounter in their environments, but these sounds are also incredibly inflexible as they are limited in type and use.  This means that if a primate encounters two different environmental stimuli simultaneously the primate can only express one response, not two.  This may occur when a primate encounters food and a predator at the same time.  In situation the primate can only signal one of two sounds: one for food or one for predator/danger but not both.  Also, this inflexibility in sounds means that the same sound may be used for completely different situations even if a new response is warranted.  For example, a primate may react to encountering a new situation (e.g. a new food source) the same way as it would to a predator by utilizing the fear/danger response.   

It is believed that our hominid ancestors utilized a similar form of communication, but as their brains evolved and developed they eventually began to manipulate the sounds they could produce and associated them with specific meanings, thoughts, and abstract ideas.  This is why we, as humans, can speak and communicate, whereas other animals cannot.  We also have the capacity to learn what these sounds mean and their associations, which is another reason why we have language and other animals are not considered to possess language.

Figure 1: Washoe & Beatrice Gardner

But primate studies have provided linguistic scholars further insights human and primate communication.  Experiments demonstrate that primates, specifically apes (i.e. chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos) can learn to use language, although they cannot speak.  They can learn and use sign language when taught by a human handler.  The first primate to do this was a chimpanzee named Washoe (Figure 1).  She was taught sign language by R. Allen and Beatrice Gardner, who were stationed at the University of Nevada-Reno.  Washoe learned over 100 signs representing several English words and within a year was able to communicate with short, basic sentences.  Studies of Washoe were followed up by a study on another chimpanzee named Lucy (Figure 2).  Primatologist Roger Fouts taught Lucy a series of signs, and she demonstrated similar language learning capabilities as Washoe.  She, however, took her language skills a bit further as she demonstrated the ability to teach language, swear, and lie, but it was Lucy’s ability to teach language that provided scholars insights into the cultural transmission of language.  This means that language is learned, which has since been identified as a key feature of language.

 

Figure 2: Lucy & Roger Fouts (Image Source: Allposters.com)

While work with chimpanzees was pioneering the work with gorillas provided more insights into language and language acquisition.  Penny Patterson worked with a gorilla named Koko (Figure 3), and Koko demonstrated a greater capacity to learn.  Koko learned far more signs than her chimpanzee predecessors and had a greater ability to compose thoughts.  She even demonstrated the ability to create new words, which is identified as productivity.  She connected specific signs and words to describe objects that she had seen but didn’t have a sign for.  She also demonstrated displacement, which means that she would discuss matters that were not present or were in the past.  This occurred when Koko apologized to Penny, her handler, for biting her in the previous days.  

Figure 3: Koko & Pet Kitten

There is at least one case of a Bonobo learning to communicate with humans, too.  Kanzi (Figure 4) is one such Bonobo housed at the Language Research Center at Georgia State University.  He learned and mastered communication via a keyboard with symbols, referred to as a lexigram, and he responds to specific human words by typing the symbol on the keyboard.  He, like the other primates, has demonstrated an ability to communicate with humans through the use of the keyboard, but he also can communicate through responding to commands given to him by his human handlers.  

Figure 4: Kanzi & Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

These primate studies show that primates have the ability to learn and use language, but this is only after they have learned means of communication from humans.  There remains no evidence of independent invention of language among primates-be they in captivity or in the wild.  As such there are critics of these studies and primates’ ability to learn language, but it is important to note that none of these critics have actually worked with primates in these capacities.  I do, however, want to leave you with several videos so you can judge for yourself whether or not these studies are legitimate or not in case you, too, have your doubts:

Washoe Video

Koko Video

Kanzi Video

References:

Gezon, L., & Kottak, C. (2014).  Cultural Anthropology McGraw-Hill