JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Alex the Gray Parrot... look at this!

Making a sign in order to receive a peanut or a banana is hardly REAL communication.

Another significant problem in the chimp research involves how they string signs together. Once a human child has reached the two-word or three-word stage, they show the ability to combine words in ways consistent with he word order of the particular language they are learning to speak. For example, a child in an English speaking environment will put modifiers in front of nouns (e.g., big ball), while a child in a French speaking environment will do the exact opposite (e.g., ball black). THEY NEVER STRING SIGNS TOGETHER IN RANDOM ORDER.

This shows that children are processing the system -- that they have an innate grammar that they are using to learn the particular variety of human language spoken in the speech community in which they live.

Chimps NEVER SHOW THIS KIND OF KNOWLEDGE. They will often randomly string signs together in any order until they receive their reward. The following is an example chimp sentence:

ME BANANA YOU YOU YOU BANANA YOU ME ME YOU BANANA ME

A child would NEVER produce a 'sentence' like this. This clearly shows that the chimps lack grammar, without which they cannot learn human language. This is a HUGE point and one that Joan London will never tell you about on the PBS specials. The use of human language requires innate human grammar, something children are born with, something that cannot be taught, and something that is 100% lacking in non-humans. Without grammar there can be no understanding or processing of human language.