CAN NONHUMANS USE LANGUAGE?
i    Some linguists say that it is the ability of humans to acquire and use language that differentiates them from all other animals. Yet other animals, too, use symbols to communicate. Bees perform a dance that tells other bees where they found sources of nectar; the grunts and gestures of chimpanzees signify varying desires and emotions. These forms of communication do not
5    necessarily have the grammatical characteristics of language, however. Notwithstanding these obvious differences, some experts have devoted many years of their careers to ongoing studies of the linguistic capabilities of animals.
Over the last forty years, several researchers have asserted that nonhumans can master language. Chimpanzees and gorillas have been the most popular targets of study because at
10   maturity they are estimated to have the intelligence of two- or three-year-old children, who are usually well on their way to learning language. Dolphins, too, have been studied because they have a complex communication system and exceptionally large brains relative to their body size. It would seem that if these animals were unable to learn language, their general intelligence could not be blamed. Instead, failure would be attributed to the absence of a genetic makeup that
15   permits language learning.
The question of whether nonhuman mammals can learn to use language is not a simple one, for at least two reasons. First, language is more than just communication, but defining just when animals are exhibiting that "something more" is a source of debate. What seems to differentiate human language from the gestures, grunts, chirps, whistles, or cries of other animals is
20   grammar—a formal set of rules for combining words. Also, because of their anatomical
structures, nonhuman mammals will never be able to "speak" in the same way that humans do. To test these animals' ability to learn language, investigators, therefore, must devise innovative ways for them to communicate.
David and Ann Premack taught their chimp, Sarah, to communicate by placing differently
25   shaped chips, each symbolizing a word, on a magnetic board (1971). Lana, a chimpanzee studied by Duane Rumbaugh (1977), learned to follow instructions to communicate by pressing keys on a specially designed computer. American Sign Language (ASL), the hand-gesture language used by deaf people, has been used by Beatrice and Alien Gardner with the chimp Washoe and by Herbert Terrace with Nim Chimsky. And Kanzi, a bonobo (commonly known as a pygmy

30   chimpanzee) studied by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (1990, 1993), learned to recognize spoken words and to communicate by both gesturing and pressing word-symbol keys on a computer that would "speak" for him.
Studies of these animals suggested that they could spontaneously manipulate combinations of words to refer to things that were not present. Washoe, Lana, Sarah, Nim, and Kanzi all
35   mastered between 130 and 500 words. Their vocabulary included names for concrete objects such as apple or me; verbs such as tickle and eat, adjectives such as happy and big, and adverbs such as again. The animals incorporated the words into sentences, expressing wishes such as "You tickle me" or "If Sarah good, then apple." Sometimes the sentences referred to things in the past. Finally, all these animals seemed to enjoy their communication devices and used them
40   spontaneously to interact and form mutual bonds with their caretakers.
Many of the preliminary conclusions about primate language learning were challenged by Herbert Terrace and his colleagues in their investigation of Nim. Terrace noticed many subtle characteristics of Nim's communications that seemed incompatible with a child's use of language, and he argued that animals in other studies demonstrated these same characteristics.
45         First, Terrace said, the format of their sentences was always relatively simple and brief. Nim could use isolated gestures or could combine two or three gestures, but the chimp never used strings of words or clauses that conveyed more sophisticated or abstract messages. Second, Terrace cited the animals' lack of spontaneity, creativity, and expanding complexity and adaptation, which are characteristic of children's language. Many of the animals' sentences were
50   requests for food, tickling, baths, pets, and other pleasurable objects and experiences. Other researchers pointed out that chimps do not inherently associate seen objects with heard words, as human infants do. Finally, Terrace questioned whether experimenter bias influenced the reports of the chimps' communications. Consciously or not, experimenters who conclude that chimps learn language might tend to ignore strings that violate grammatical order or to
55   reinterpret ambiguous strings so that they make grammatical sense. For example, if Nim sees someone holding a banana and signs, "Nim banana," the experimenter might assume the word order is correct and means "Nim wants the banana" rather than "That banana belongs to Nim," in which case the word order would be inaccurate.
Linguists and psychologists are still not unified about whether our sophisticated mammalian
60   cousins can learn language. Studies are expensive and take many years. Accordingly, the amount of evidence in the area is minimal—just a handful of studies, each based on a few animals. Nevertheless, two things are clear. First, whatever the chimp, gorilla, and dolphin have learned is a much more primitive and limited form of communication than that learned by children. Second, their level of communication does not do justice to their overall intelligence; these
65   animals are smarter than their "language" production suggests. In summary, it is possible to infer from the evidence up until now that humans have language abilities that are unique, but that under the right circumstances, and with the right tools, other animals can master many language-like skills.
Adapted from Douglas A. Bernstein, Louis A. Penner, Alison Clarke-Stewart, and Edward J. Roy, Psychology, 6th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 301-3. (Adapted by JP Loucky for Online Reading with TTS.)
POSSIBLE PRE- OR POST-READING QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. What do linguists study?	
2. How can you define language? What is the role of
grammar in language?	
3. What linguistic problems have you experienced in
learning a foreign or second language?
4. How do animals communicate with each other? Give
 some specific examples of animal communication.

5. How is animal communication different from human
communication?

6. What kinds of animals have been taught to communicate with humans? 
What methods have they used to communicate? How successful have they been?

7. How and why does the famous “Love Chapter” of I Corinthians contrast language ability and knowledge with love?
What happens when we have communication competency but lack character?