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A little over a decade ago, studies of ape language seemed to have been
discredited in respectable intellectual circles. Half-a-dozen projects,
in which individual chimpanzees had been taught various forms of sign language,
were summarily dismissed by some scholars as irrelevant to their ultimate
goal – an understanding of the evolution of human language.

For instance, in March 1980, Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia
University, New York, stated in a landmark paper in Science that the apes
were doing little more than mimicking their instructors, a skill that, in
different ways, rats and pigeons acquire with ease. The apes displayed no
sense of grammatical structure in their use of symbols, he said. Later the
same year, Thomas Sebeok, a linguist at Indiana University, went so far
as to suggest at a major conference in New York that ape-language researchers
were, at best, victims of self-delusion or, at worst, perpetrators of outright
fraud. As a result of these assaults, funding for ape-language studies virtually
dried up. Many journals, including Science, subsequently refused to publish
what little research was being written up.

In one of those nice accidents of history, 1980 also saw the birth of
a pygmy chimpanzee called Kanzi, whose activi-ties were destined to force
a re-evaluation of language abilities in apes and challenge the new Terrace/Sebeok
position. Kanzi lives with Panzee and Panbanisha at the Language Research
Center in Atlanta, part of Georgia State University. Not only is he said
to approach some of the key criteria of grammatical rules in his use of
‘words’ on a lexigram, but he is also able to comprehend complex spoken
sentences, a first in ape-language studies. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi’s
guardian at the Language Research Center, last summer described her charge’s
accomplishments at a Wenner-Gren Foundation meeting in Portugal. Participants
were impressed. ‘There was a consensus that the new data on chimpanzees
. . . go even further than previous ape studies in making us question the
nature of human uniqueness,’ says Iain Davidson of the University of New
England, Australia.

There has long been an interest in the origin of human language. Scottish
kings and Egyptian pharaohs are said to have kept infants locked up in isolation,
with the expectation that their untutored tongues would give a clue to the
nature of the first language humans ever uttered. The origin of language
eventually emerged as a subject for respectable academic study. But a dichotomy
of views has had an important influence on the conduct and perception of
ape-language studies. On one hand, there is the continuity school, which
views human language as part of a cognitive continuum, rooted in our ape-like
ancestors. Opposing this view is the discontinuity school, for which language
is a uniquely human trait with no direct evolutionary connection to ape
brains.

Ape-language studies, which began in earnest in the 1960s, were anchored
in the first of these two schools. By seeking to demonstrate in apes the
existence of some of the elements of human language, such as the use of
various kinds of symbols within a grammatical structure, researchers hoped
to reveal the ‘cognitive substrate’ of human language in our close relatives.
To those in the discontinuity school, the most prominent of whom was Noam
Chomsky, ape-language researchers were searching for something that did
not exist. If language is a uniquely human trait, then no semblance of it
could be discovered in apes, because none is present, they argued. Claims
to have demonstrated any kind of continuity therefore must be illusory.

Sebeok was-and still is-firmly in the discontinuity school, and was
by far the most outspoken of the critics. ‘Ape-language research is replete
with personalities who believe themselves to be acting according to the
most exalted motivations and sophisticated manners, but in reality have
involved themselves in the most rudimentary circus-like performances,’ Sebeok
proclaimed at the 1980 New York gathering. The mention of ‘circus-like performances’
was a less than subtle reference to a famous vaudeville horse, Clever Hans,
which, according to his trainer, could solve arithmetical problems and communicate
the answers by tapping his hoof on the ground the appropriate number of
times. In fact, the trainer was signalling to the horse, by almost imperceptible
and completely unconscious movements of his body when Clever Hans reached
the right solution. Not surprisingly, the ape-language researchers objected
strongly to Sebeok’s characterisation of their work. ‘Vituperative criticism’,
was Savage-Rumbaugh’s riposte.

These florid criticisms aside, many ape-language researchers had indeed
strayed into sticky territory, largely of their own making. Many of the
experimental approaches used were not rigorous enough to demonstrate unequivocally
what was being claimed; self-delusion through an inability to separate mere
mimicry from creative symbol production was therefore a real possibility.

All or nothing to say

More fundamental, however, was the way the experimental task was framed:
namely, apes would either have elements of grammar that would parallel human
language, or they would not. There was no middle ground. This uncompromising
position had effectively been imposed on the field by the philosophy of
the discontinuity school. Although ape-language researchers, by definition,
were not of this school, its tradition-that human language was something
special, and that anything less than the real thing was irrelevant-permeated
linguistics.

Savage-Rumbaugh has been involved with ape-language studies since the
early 1970s, first at the University of Oklahoma, where Roger Fouts had
been training a chimp called Washoe, and later at Georgia State University
and the Yerkes Primate Center, with Lana and others. With a background in
developmental psychology of children, she enthusiastically switched her
attention to chimpanzees once her graduate work was completed. ‘I thought
chimps were extremely intelligent and had a lot to tell us about ourselves,
including language origins,’ she says. Her early experience with Washoe
and others was, however, discouraging. ‘I fairly quickly became disillusioned
with the work,’ she recalls. ‘It wasn’t that I thought the chimps didn’t
know anything, and that it was all imitation. But I did think that the results
were being over-interpreted, that exaggerated claims were being made. This
often happens in a new area of science.’

With concerns over the validity of ape-language work similar to those
voiced by Herbert Terrace, Savage-Rumbaugh therefore moved to Yerkes, where
she eventually developed an important new approach. While Terrace was at
Columbia University, testing chimpanzees’ language abilities by looking
for production of grammatical structure under strict laboratory conditions,
Savage-Rumbaugh began to shift emphasis, both in technique and questions
asked. Instead of putting the chimpanzeess through rote learning of symbols,
gradually building up the vocabulary a symbol at time, she decided to take
a more naturalistic approach. She set out to employ a large vocabulary of
symbols from the beginning, using them as language is used around human
children. This way, the chimpanzees might pick up language as children do.
‘The traditional approach assumes limited ability, and in effect imposes
that on the animals,’ she explains.

The shift in questions asked was away from an emphasis on grammatical
structure, at least in the beginning, and towards comprehension. ‘I had
been concerned that comprehension had never been considered an issue at
all, just whether the chimp could produce a symbol on cue and could produce
combinations of symbols,’ she says. ‘It seemed reasonable to me-obvious
even-that comprehension was an important element of language, that language
is first acquired through comprehension, and that production flows from
³Ù³ó²¹³Ù.’

The Language Research Center team applied this approach to some extent
in its work with Austin and Sherman, two young common chimpanzees. But Savage-Rumbaugh’s
initial motivation for going to the primate centre had been to work with
pygmy chimps, also known as bonobos. Slightly smaller than common chimpanzees,
and with darker colouration, bonobos are something of an enigma in the primate
world. They live in Zaire in dense forest which makes field study extremely
difficult. Their range is rapidly being destroyed, so they may soon be extinct
under natural conditions. Much of what is known about these animals has
come from research at primate centres such as Yerkes. Largely from anecdotal
accounts, it was said that bonobos were more vocal than common chimpanzees,
and communicated a wider range of information through facial expression
and gestures. Initially, Savage-Rumbaugh had been studying this nonverbal
communication, but she decided to embark on a language project too. If nothing
else, it would provide an interesting comparison between the two species.

Matata, a mature bonobo female, was the first subject chosen for the
project, which began in 1981. But Matata did not come alone. Six months
earlier she had kidnapped a newborn infant and kept it as her own. This
was Kanzi. While Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleagues were working with Matata,
Kanzi ran around, getting into mischief and generally performing playfully,
as young chimpanzees are wont to do. ‘Kanzi often interrupted his mother’s
training sessions by leaping on her head, her hand or the keys, just as
she was about to select a symbol,’ the Language Research Center team reported.
‘He would also leap on her hand just as she was reaching for a piece of
food, grab it away and run off . . . During this period, Kanzi did not engage
in any behaviours that suggested he knew that specific symbols were associated
with specific foods.’

Some ape-language programmes have employed American Sign Language, in
which the trainers teach the appropriatesigns by repeatedly ‘moulding’ the
animals’ hands and fingers to the correct shape. Savage-Rumbaugh believes
that this laborious process interferes with communication. Instead, the
Language Research Center system employs an extensive ‘lexigram’, a matrix
of 256 geometrical shapes on a board. Instructors touch the symbols, which
represent verbs and nouns, to create simple requests or commands. At the
same time, the sentence is spoken verbally, with the objective of testing
comprehension of spoken English.

Although she was clearly intelligent in many ways, Matata was a poor
learner, and never appeared to pick up the use of more than half a dozen
symbols. ‘At that stage, a year into the project, I was very disappointed,’
says Savage-Rumbaugh. ‘But then someone said they thought that Kanzi understood
something of what was being said around him.’ There had been no effort to
teach Kanzi anything, merely to tolerate his presence. Nevertheless, once
the suggestion had been made that he might understand some of the spoken
language, careful testing showed it to be true. ‘He had picked up the half
dozen symbols we had been trying to teach Matata, but he had done it with
no instruction, just naturally as human children do.’ From this point onwards,
an even greater effort was made to place language learning in a naturalistic
context.

Georgia State University’s Language Research Center incorporates a 23-hectare
forest where, during the warmer months, food is supplied at 17 named locations.
When Kanzi was young, most of his days were spent in the forest, where much
of the communication concerned going to specific locations for specific
food items. A young ape’s life focuses very much on food and play, but here
these activities were elevated to elements of communication. Kanzi was joined
by a sister, Mulika, born to Matata when he was two and a half. The two
siblings grew up together, both immersed in the language-learning milieu.
They therefore provided a direct comparison with Austin and Sherman, the
two common chimpanzees that Savage-Rumbaugh had worked with earlier.

Double standards

Language acquisition in humans is a relatively slow process, spread
out over some half dozen years. Over a similar period Kanzi’s language abilities
changed too, becoming more sophisticated in both comprehension and structure.
Savage-Rumbaugh suggests that this similar, albeit slower and more limited,
developmental process in bonobos indicates the presence of a cognitive substrate
of language in apes. She accuses critics who charge that what Kanzi does
is not language of applying a double standard. ‘Because we know that children
eventually will develop language, their abilities at an early age are given
more significance than similar abilities in apes,’ she says. ‘When children
make up novel words it is called lexical innovation, but when chimpanzees
do the same thing it is called ambiguous. Grammatical structure in young
children is often ill-formed, but we don’t say that they don’t have language.
We need better methodologies, which can be applied to humans and apes, without
regard to the end point of language development.’

How far did Kanzi go in his language development? ‘Impressively far,’
says Savage-Rumbaugh, ‘certainly further than any common chimpanzee.’ Now
10 years old, Kanzi has a vocabulary of some 200 words. But it is not the
size of his vocabulary that is impressive, it is what the words apparently
mean to him that catches the attention. Experimental psychologists are familiar
with the prodigious feats of association that even the most humble animal
may perform. Chimpanzees, being very clever, are therefore likely to be
able to behave in complex ways that might mimic language abilities but are
founded on mere association-the linking of sounds and symbols with objects
in the absence of true understanding. Savage-Rumbaugh believes that what
Kanzi does goes beyond this, and is firmly in the territory of the rudiments
of language.

Recently, the Language Research Center team conducted tests on Kanzi’s
comprehension. This involved giving him a series of sentences-requests to
do things-delivered by someone out of his sight. Karen Brakke and other
team members in the room with Kanzi wore earphones; they could not hear
the instructions and so could not cue Kanzi, even unconsciously. None of
the sentences was practised, and every one was different.

‘The first ones were relatively simple, like ‘Can you put the raisins
in the bowl’, and ‘Can you give the cereal to Karen,’ ‘ explains Savage-Rumbaugh.
‘He did those kind of thing very easily, so we made it more difficult, like
‘Can you go to the colony room and get the telephone’. There were four or
five things in the colony room, things that normally weren’t there, so it
had to be a specific response, a specific understanding on Kanzi’s part.’

Already, these kinds of abilities were beyond what Austin and Sherman
had been able to do. For one thing, the common chimpanzees had been unable
to learn and comprehend spoken English, and instructions had to be via the
lexigram. Even so, they seemed unable to hold details of the instruction
long enough in their mind to complete a task composed of several components.

Going one step further in complexity, Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleagues
discovered an interesting discrimination that Kanzi made with the structure
of certain instructions. Because the instruction ‘Go to the colony room
and get the orange’ might be thought simply to be linking the colony room
and the orange that he finds there, they added a complication. With an orange
in front of Kanzi, the instruction was repeated. About 90 per cent of the
time Kanzi seemed uncertain, fumbled with the orange in front of him, and
then went to the colony and fetched the orange from there. But, if the instruction
was phrased ‘Get the orange that’s in the colony room,’ Kanzi had no hesitation.
The element of the phrase, ‘ . . . that’s in the . . . ‘ is the key. ‘This
suggests to me that the syntactically more complex phrase is producing better
comprehension than the simple one,’ says Savage-Rumbaugh. ‘I had not predicted
³Ù³ó²¹³Ù.’ Kanzi displayed this level of comprehension when he was nine years
old, but not when he was younger than six years old.

Kanzi’s word production also increased with age, again indicating some
kind of developmental process at work. In collaboration with Patricia Marks
Greenfield, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles,
Savage-Rumbaugh showed that in producing word combinations, Kanzi was able
not only to learn simple grammatical rules, but also invent his own rules.
The rule he learnt, which he picked up from his keepers, was that in two-word
utterances, action precedes object. During the first month Kanzi employed
no specific order for action and object symbols, but during the last four
months he did so to a statistically significant degree. ‘This developmental
trend from random ordering to an ordering pref-erence was also found for
human children at the two-word stage,’ the researchers note.

One rule that Kanzi invented himself involved the combination of symbol
and gesture, as in ‘chase’ followed by pointing to someone. Marks Greenfield
and Savage-Rumbaugh observe that Kanzi’s rule, ‘place lexigram first’, had
considerable generality as well as originality. ‘Most important, in none
of the relations was there a human model for the rule. This is strong evidence
for creative productivity.’

A second rule Kanzi invented involved the combination of several action
symbols, such as chase, tickle, hide, slap, bite, hug, and so on. Of such
components is a pygmy chimpanzee’s life composed. And, interestingly enough,
the way in which Kanzi combines these words reflects the structure of his
life. Certain of these symbols, such as chase and tickle, appeared first
to a highly statistically significant degree in two-symbol utterances. Others,
such as hide, slap and bite, appeared second in such utterances, also to
a statistically significant degree. Kanzi’s rationale, it seems, is that
lexigrams that appear first represent an invitation to play, while those
in second place represent the content of the play. ‘In effect, Kanzi’s rule
of syntactic order corresponded to Kanzi’s own rules of behavioural order
and, indeed, to those of pygmy chimps in general in the wild,’ say the researchers.

These and other observations persuade Marks Greenfield and Savage-Rumbaugh
that they are witnessing real evidence of the cognitive substrate that underlies
human language. ‘The capacity for grammatical rules (including arbitrary
ones) in Kanzi’s semiotic productions shows grammar as an area of evolutionary
continuity,’ they say. ‘We might prefer to speak of ‘protogrammar’ rather
than grammar. However . . . the comparative data are such that if we speak
of bonobo rules as protogrammar, we should apply the same term to the two-year-old
child.’ No double standards.

Many psychologists are extremely impressed with Kanzi and the implications
of the observations. For instance, Emil Menzel, of the State University
of New York at Stony Brook, says: ‘I’ve seen the tapes, and they are very
convincing; there’s no cueing here.’ He believes, however, that many people
will not accept the observations for what they really imply. Specifically,
he is referring to the supporters of the discontinuity theory, which states
that human language is rooted in cognitive processes for building mental
models of the world, and is not solely a means of communication. No rudiment
of this uniquely human capacity can therefore be expected to exist in apes.
‘If you take the Sebeok view, nothing will convince you,’ he laments.

Menzel is right. ‘Facts do not convince me,’ says Sebeok. ‘Theories
do. Ape-language research is bereft of theories.’ Savage-Rumbaugh responds
with a challenge: ‘The singular fact that an ape can learn simple language
when given exposure that is similar to that of a child re-veals the inadequacy
of both the continuity and discontinuity theories, for neither of them addresses
the role of the communicative partner.’ She also accuses Sebeok of being
uninformed about Kanzi’s abilities. ‘I would have to conclude that he has
not read any of the work from this project for some time,’ she says. ‘Ape
language is helping us formulate new theories of language acquisition that
have an evolutionary basis.’

Although Terrace acknowledges that the Kanzi project is important, ‘because
he didn’t have to be drilled to learn symbols’, he does not accept Kanzi’s
behaviour as evidence of rudiments of language. ‘Kanzi still uses the symbols
to get things, to ask for things,’ he complains. ‘He is not using them to
share his perception of the world. I’d like to see reliable evidence of
referential response, like ‘I’ve experienced X,’ rather than the simple
statements you get.’

‘We are simply dealing with a matter of degree,’ responds Savage-Rumbaugh.
‘Yes, Kanzi uses his symbols to get things, and to ask for things; but so
do young children. In fact, the predominant symbol use of normal children
is ‘requesting’. Kanzi’s percentage is higher, but he can reliably tell
you some things, such as when he is going to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, what he
has just eaten or where he is headed while travelling. Terrace has consistently
refused to acknowledge this.’

To demand that language usage in apes must conform exactly to the human
pattern in order to be accepted as a ‘cognitive substrate’ of language is
not only unreasonable, it is irrelevant, says Savage-Rumbaugh. ‘With a brain
one-third the size of our own, Kanzi is likely to fall down somewhere, and
the more we understand what he cannot do, the more we can pinpoint the specific
kinds of skills that must have evolved in early hominids.’

Meanwhile, Kanzi is apparently on the verge of a new simian world. His
capacity for comprehension far outstrips his capacity to produce language
using the lexigram. ‘He gets extremely frustrated,’ says Savage-Rumbaugh.
He often gets very vocal at these times, a kind of high-pitched squeaking.
Is he trying to imitate speech? ‘It may be a long shot, but all these other
things I’ve tried have been surprises,’ she says. ‘He tries very hard. He
looks right at you and makes these sounds. When you talk back to him he
vocalises more and more.’ The Georgia State University researchers are working
with the idea of analysing Kanzi’s sound spectrum, to see if there is sufficient
breadth to develop into rudimentary speech.

And if Kanzi were to talk what would he say? Maybe the first thing he’d
say is that he is fed up with Terrace claiming that apes don’t have language.