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Apes, Language, and the Human Mind
Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child.
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and
cognitive and developmental psychology.
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and
cognitive and developmental psychology.
254 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
7 books4 followersSue Savage-Rumbaugh is a psychologist and primatologist.
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January 26, 2025
A DETAILED LOOK AT KANZI’S UTTERANCES, ASKING THE QJUESTION, ‘IS IT LANGUAGE?’
Authors Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Stuart Shanker, and Talbot Taylor wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “For more than twenty years, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has been studying, and attempting to cultivate, the linguistic and cognitive skills of a number of laboratory-reared primates. Recently, her work with a bonobo… named Kanzi has been widely acknowledged as having achieved a scientific breakthrough. Kanzi has been shown … to have acquired linguistic and cognitive skills far beyond those achieved by any other nonhuman animal in previous research. Most notably, Kanzi has proven himself capable of comprehending spoken English utterances of a grammatical and semantic complexity equal to (and in some cases surpassing) that mastered by a normal two-and-a-half-year-old human child… the Kanzi research has led beyond empirical findings to conceptual and theoretical insights as well… [which] argue for a radical revision of the philosophical foundations underlying linguistic and cognitive research.
“The authors’ motivation in writing this book lies in our shared belief that the Kanzi research presents a serious and effective challenge not only to scientific thinking about the cognitive and communicative capabilities of nonhuman primates, but also to received knowledge concerning the possession of those capacities by humans. At the very least, we feel that the results of this research oblige us to reconsider ‘what we thought we knew’ about the nature of communication and its relation to cognition. What is promised is a complete shift on how communication and cognition are seen---and understood.”
Savage-Rumbaugh wrote in Chapter 1, “Kanzi came to the Georgia State University Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1980 with his mother, Matata, when he was just six months old… In 1975, hardly anyone knew what a bonobo was. Zoos still confused them with chimpanzees… Only in 1929 were bonobos recognized as a distinct species of ape, and even in the 1980s many people considered them to be merely diminutive chimpanzees… Certainly these creatures cannot plan ahead as we do, organize large societies… Yet for me, there is more to being human than such abstract intellectual actions. There is a kinship I recognize with I interact with young children… With bonobos, I experience a similar two-way understanding. I know how they feel, and they know how I feel.” (Pg. 3-4) Later, she adds, “Kanzi has shown us that we are not alone among God’s creatures to have been blessed with the gift of mind.” (Pg.7)
She acknowledges, “After two years of effort and more than thirty-thousand trials with the lexigrams ‘banana,’ ‘juice,’ ‘raisin,’ ‘apple,’ ‘pecan,’ and ‘orange,’ Matata’s symbol vocabulary skills are disappointing. Although she had learned to ask for a name each food correctly, she could not select a picture of the food if I pointed to its symbol. She also had difficulty ‘listening.’ When I used the keyboard to ask her to give me a specific food, she seemed puzzled. Perhaps she thought I should just take any food that I wanted. Such deficits suggested that she had not yet grasped the representational aspect of these symbols.” (Pg. 17)
She adds, “We found that while it was easy to get chimps to use symbols in a way that looked like language, it was much more difficult to get them to understand and use symbols in a manner that was truly equivalent to that of young children.” (Pg. 18)
She recounts, “The Yerkes Center decided that Matata should be bred with Kanzi’s father … and become pregnant… it was important that Matata be separated from Kanzi for as brief a period as possible… Kanzi was preoccupied with his search for Matata on the day of her disappearance… The following day, when his mother was gone, we saw a very different Kanzi at the keyboard. Not only did he use many single symbols appropriate to tell us what he wanted to eat or do, he formed the combinations ’raisin peanut’ when he wanted both foods, ‘sweet potato tickle’ when he wanted both to eat sweet potatoes and be tickled… Kanzi had been keeping a secret. He had been learning these words all along, but had never used them in a reliable manner. We thought he did not know how to talk with the keyboard, but he did.” (Pg. 22)
She recalls, “[we] began to accept the fact that he had learned to talk even though we had not been attempting to teach him… I searched back through all the notes that I… had made during the past two years, looking for any hint that somehow Kanzi had been learning language all along. How could I explain to skeptics what I had done to foster Kanzi’s language learning when I did not even know it was happening? Not only did I not document anything I DID to facilitate Kanzi’s accomplishment, I had no real record of what he HAD done.” (Pg. 25)
She explains, “Kanzi also produces a vocalization that sounds a lot like the whining noise young children make when they want something quite badly… Kanzi has invented a number of gestures that are more specific than the pointing or indicative gestures he frequently uses when there is no symbol on his keyboard for a certain object.” (Pg. 47)
She clarifies, “[Apes] Sherman and Austin always included themselves in these games, and generally they elected to be the chasee… However, since Kanzi elected to observe the chasing activity rather than participate, he needed a grammatical means of indicating who was to be the agent and who was to be the recipient… without [such a] means… the meaning of a sentence is unclear. Kanzi adopted the order of his gestures as a device to get his messages across clearly, presumably because … English relies on ordering rules for such things. Had Kanzi been exposed to another language… Kanzi probably would have adopted a different grammatical device.” (Pg. 49)
She argues, “It was important to look for evidence of grammatical rules in Kanzi’s utterances because many linguistic scholars have argued that the utterances of apes should not be characterized as truly linguistic in nature unless it can be shown that they employ grammatical rules similar to those found in human languages. These scholars have also maintained that only human beings are endowed with the ability to organize things according to the categorical relationships between them… This seemed to me to be an extreme position. After all, Kanzi had learned … to understand many spoken words, even though he himself could not speak… He recognized that two symbols could be combined to form meanings… He used this skill to communicate completely novel ideas that were his own and had never been talked about with him. Consequently, whether or not he could be shown to possess a formal grammar, the conclusion remained inescapable that Kanzi had a simple language.” (Pg. 63)
She continues, “Even though Kanzi’s combinations caused a number of linguists to raise their eyebrows in disbelief, the real key to his intelligence was not in what he said but in what he understood… the search time [on the keyboard] for any given word increased … as the number of available words went up… keyboard utterances… were rarely longer than two or three words…” (Pg. 65)
She summarizes, “Kanzi’s ability to understand language greatly exceeds his ability to produce it… this must be because the language he understands is spoken English. However, he cannot speak, so in order to communicate he must point to symbols… and to use any one of them, he must search to find what he wants to say. This means that ‘talking’ is far more difficult for Kanzi… Perhaps, in the future, a way around this limitation can be found.” (Pg. 73)
The authors note, “Given the lengths to which Savage-Rumbaugh has gone to demonstrate the justification of her claims for Kanzi and the other apes with which she had worked, and given the argumentative tools that remain to any critic who wants to challenge the justification for such claims, it is far from clear how any progress will ever be made in scientific research on the communicational and cognitive abilities of apes. Indeed, as things now stand it is far from clear how any progress ever COULD be made.” (Pg. 141)
They turn to the chimp Washoe: “the closer one looked at Washoe’s utterances, the less they looked like language. The first problem was that she did not evidence clear comprehension when others signed to her… A second problem was the repetitiveness of her utterances. Sentences like ‘You me hurry, Me you food hurry, Food hurry you me, Hurry hurry, Food hurry?’ were commonplace… The third problem was the most significant. Washoe did not seem to learn signs unless she was taught them. Often it took hundreds of trials or more for her to learn a new sign, and even then the new sign would be confused with other recently learned signs for a time…. In short, Washoe’s ability was startling, but was it language?” (Pg. 205)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the ‘ape language’ experiments.
Authors Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Stuart Shanker, and Talbot Taylor wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “For more than twenty years, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has been studying, and attempting to cultivate, the linguistic and cognitive skills of a number of laboratory-reared primates. Recently, her work with a bonobo… named Kanzi has been widely acknowledged as having achieved a scientific breakthrough. Kanzi has been shown … to have acquired linguistic and cognitive skills far beyond those achieved by any other nonhuman animal in previous research. Most notably, Kanzi has proven himself capable of comprehending spoken English utterances of a grammatical and semantic complexity equal to (and in some cases surpassing) that mastered by a normal two-and-a-half-year-old human child… the Kanzi research has led beyond empirical findings to conceptual and theoretical insights as well… [which] argue for a radical revision of the philosophical foundations underlying linguistic and cognitive research.
“The authors’ motivation in writing this book lies in our shared belief that the Kanzi research presents a serious and effective challenge not only to scientific thinking about the cognitive and communicative capabilities of nonhuman primates, but also to received knowledge concerning the possession of those capacities by humans. At the very least, we feel that the results of this research oblige us to reconsider ‘what we thought we knew’ about the nature of communication and its relation to cognition. What is promised is a complete shift on how communication and cognition are seen---and understood.”
Savage-Rumbaugh wrote in Chapter 1, “Kanzi came to the Georgia State University Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1980 with his mother, Matata, when he was just six months old… In 1975, hardly anyone knew what a bonobo was. Zoos still confused them with chimpanzees… Only in 1929 were bonobos recognized as a distinct species of ape, and even in the 1980s many people considered them to be merely diminutive chimpanzees… Certainly these creatures cannot plan ahead as we do, organize large societies… Yet for me, there is more to being human than such abstract intellectual actions. There is a kinship I recognize with I interact with young children… With bonobos, I experience a similar two-way understanding. I know how they feel, and they know how I feel.” (Pg. 3-4) Later, she adds, “Kanzi has shown us that we are not alone among God’s creatures to have been blessed with the gift of mind.” (Pg.7)
She acknowledges, “After two years of effort and more than thirty-thousand trials with the lexigrams ‘banana,’ ‘juice,’ ‘raisin,’ ‘apple,’ ‘pecan,’ and ‘orange,’ Matata’s symbol vocabulary skills are disappointing. Although she had learned to ask for a name each food correctly, she could not select a picture of the food if I pointed to its symbol. She also had difficulty ‘listening.’ When I used the keyboard to ask her to give me a specific food, she seemed puzzled. Perhaps she thought I should just take any food that I wanted. Such deficits suggested that she had not yet grasped the representational aspect of these symbols.” (Pg. 17)
She adds, “We found that while it was easy to get chimps to use symbols in a way that looked like language, it was much more difficult to get them to understand and use symbols in a manner that was truly equivalent to that of young children.” (Pg. 18)
She recounts, “The Yerkes Center decided that Matata should be bred with Kanzi’s father … and become pregnant… it was important that Matata be separated from Kanzi for as brief a period as possible… Kanzi was preoccupied with his search for Matata on the day of her disappearance… The following day, when his mother was gone, we saw a very different Kanzi at the keyboard. Not only did he use many single symbols appropriate to tell us what he wanted to eat or do, he formed the combinations ’raisin peanut’ when he wanted both foods, ‘sweet potato tickle’ when he wanted both to eat sweet potatoes and be tickled… Kanzi had been keeping a secret. He had been learning these words all along, but had never used them in a reliable manner. We thought he did not know how to talk with the keyboard, but he did.” (Pg. 22)
She recalls, “[we] began to accept the fact that he had learned to talk even though we had not been attempting to teach him… I searched back through all the notes that I… had made during the past two years, looking for any hint that somehow Kanzi had been learning language all along. How could I explain to skeptics what I had done to foster Kanzi’s language learning when I did not even know it was happening? Not only did I not document anything I DID to facilitate Kanzi’s accomplishment, I had no real record of what he HAD done.” (Pg. 25)
She explains, “Kanzi also produces a vocalization that sounds a lot like the whining noise young children make when they want something quite badly… Kanzi has invented a number of gestures that are more specific than the pointing or indicative gestures he frequently uses when there is no symbol on his keyboard for a certain object.” (Pg. 47)
She clarifies, “[Apes] Sherman and Austin always included themselves in these games, and generally they elected to be the chasee… However, since Kanzi elected to observe the chasing activity rather than participate, he needed a grammatical means of indicating who was to be the agent and who was to be the recipient… without [such a] means… the meaning of a sentence is unclear. Kanzi adopted the order of his gestures as a device to get his messages across clearly, presumably because … English relies on ordering rules for such things. Had Kanzi been exposed to another language… Kanzi probably would have adopted a different grammatical device.” (Pg. 49)
She argues, “It was important to look for evidence of grammatical rules in Kanzi’s utterances because many linguistic scholars have argued that the utterances of apes should not be characterized as truly linguistic in nature unless it can be shown that they employ grammatical rules similar to those found in human languages. These scholars have also maintained that only human beings are endowed with the ability to organize things according to the categorical relationships between them… This seemed to me to be an extreme position. After all, Kanzi had learned … to understand many spoken words, even though he himself could not speak… He recognized that two symbols could be combined to form meanings… He used this skill to communicate completely novel ideas that were his own and had never been talked about with him. Consequently, whether or not he could be shown to possess a formal grammar, the conclusion remained inescapable that Kanzi had a simple language.” (Pg. 63)
She continues, “Even though Kanzi’s combinations caused a number of linguists to raise their eyebrows in disbelief, the real key to his intelligence was not in what he said but in what he understood… the search time [on the keyboard] for any given word increased … as the number of available words went up… keyboard utterances… were rarely longer than two or three words…” (Pg. 65)
She summarizes, “Kanzi’s ability to understand language greatly exceeds his ability to produce it… this must be because the language he understands is spoken English. However, he cannot speak, so in order to communicate he must point to symbols… and to use any one of them, he must search to find what he wants to say. This means that ‘talking’ is far more difficult for Kanzi… Perhaps, in the future, a way around this limitation can be found.” (Pg. 73)
The authors note, “Given the lengths to which Savage-Rumbaugh has gone to demonstrate the justification of her claims for Kanzi and the other apes with which she had worked, and given the argumentative tools that remain to any critic who wants to challenge the justification for such claims, it is far from clear how any progress will ever be made in scientific research on the communicational and cognitive abilities of apes. Indeed, as things now stand it is far from clear how any progress ever COULD be made.” (Pg. 141)
They turn to the chimp Washoe: “the closer one looked at Washoe’s utterances, the less they looked like language. The first problem was that she did not evidence clear comprehension when others signed to her… A second problem was the repetitiveness of her utterances. Sentences like ‘You me hurry, Me you food hurry, Food hurry you me, Hurry hurry, Food hurry?’ were commonplace… The third problem was the most significant. Washoe did not seem to learn signs unless she was taught them. Often it took hundreds of trials or more for her to learn a new sign, and even then the new sign would be confused with other recently learned signs for a time…. In short, Washoe’s ability was startling, but was it language?” (Pg. 205)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the ‘ape language’ experiments.
November 26, 2012
I enjoyed the first half of this book which describes in excruciating detail the nature of her work with Bonobos. The second half of the book provides a detailed analysis of language and how our historical understanding exempts apes from a capacity for it. I was not prepared for the degree of deep philosophical study towards language and syntax. I was more interested in the first half of the book, which describes the Bonobos and their fascinating communication skills. Still very worthwhile to read, even for those not so interested in the story of linguistics.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews