Brian James
Language: Finding The Link
The scientific community and especially those in
the realm of anthropology have long studied the world of
primate evolution and how it fits into the development of
human culture. There are many avenues that researchers have
explored in completing the picture of human evolution
including skeletal morphology, tool technology, food
processing and methods of hunting and agriculture. All of
these aspects are easily understood within the range of a
few million years since the first evidence of bipedalism in
early hominids. Conversely, little is understood about our
living primate counterparts in terms of how their culture
represents previous stages of human development, there is
one area of study that has shed light and understanding on
this dilemma, language. More specifically it is the use of
American Sign Language as a catalyst in understanding how
language originates and helping to bridge the gap in human
evolution.
It is fairly well know that chimpanzees remain
our closest living relatives in terms of genetic similarity.
Apes in general share many characteristics with modern
humans including a higher intelligence than most other
mammals and an ever increasing and better understood culture
including tools and family systems. However, one thing that
modern apes do not share with humans is the area of the
brain that is capable of producing speech called Broca’s
area, instead there are similar, less complex areas located
in the primate brain that may be linked to simple
communication (sci/tech news staff 2006). However in
anthropology it is recognized that speech and language can
mean two succinctly different things. This has become
increasingly apparent in primate use of ASL to convey
thought and observances. Recently, and as far back as the
early sixties there have been two cases that have been
expressively interesting to the scientific community. The
first being the case of a chimpanzee named Washoe who had
been reported to have been able to use 250 signs and the
second being a young gorilla named Koko who has been
reported to use 1,000 different signs.
As part of a research experiment on
animal language acquisition, Washoe developed a modest
ability to communicate with humans using ASL. Washoe had
lived at Central Washington University since 1980. Washoe was taught
ASL based on a method that used rewarding the signs when
they were correct. When Washoe would spontaneously make a
gesture that in some way resembled an ASL sign, the
scientists would shape the gesture by encouraging and
rewarding variations of that gesture until it became a true
ASL sign. Washoe caught on quickly to the idea that the ASL
sign for MORE could be used to get more of anything,
including food, games, and books. In this way, the
chimpanzee showed the ability to spontaneously generalize an
abstract concept such as "MORE" to a variety of contexts in
which training had not occurred. There however has been some
controversy in the scientific community surrounding the
experiment with Washoe. It is not believed that her
cognition of the signs is true. It is claimed that Washoe
learned many signs as a trick, which many other animals can
do to various extents (Gardner
1989).
Koko much like Washoe was taught ASL by
researchers however the method of teaching is much
different. Koko was exposed to ASL signs from the age of one
and has developed around 1,000 independent signs. Koko uses
the language freely and in novel ways, even when there is no
foreseeable gratification (Steinberg 2000). Koko has been
documented inventing new signs to communicate novel
thoughts. For example, the primary researcher to work with
Koko, Dr. Francine Patterson, asserts that nobody taught
Koko the word for "ring", therefore to refer to it she
combined the words "finger" and "bracelet", hence
"finger-bracelet". Similarly, she invented "drink-fruit"
(melon), "water-bird" (swan) and "animal-person" (gorilla) (Candland
1993).
With the advances in the study of primate
language development we can begin to complete the complex
puzzle of human evolution. ASL has become the gate way to
knowledge in the field and the first human language to be
used by non-human species. Anthropology has been able to
develop methods and standardized practices to incorporate
ASL into modern primatology.
References:
Candland,
Douglas K (1993) Feral Children and Clever Animals:
Reflections on Human Nature.
Oxford, England. Oxford University Press
Gardner, R.
Allen, Gardner, Beatrix T., Van Cantfort, Thomas E. (1989).
Teaching Sign
Language to Chimpanzees.
Albany, New York. SUNY Press
Sci/Tech News Staff (2006, July 24) Shared Ancestor to
Humans and Present-Day Non-Human
Steinberg, Danny D., Sciarini, Natalia V. (2000). An
Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London, England. Pearson Longman