Animal language
Encyclopedia
Animal language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as human language
.
Some researchers including the linguist Charles Hockett
, who proposed a list of design features of Human Language, argue that there are significant differences separating human language from animal
communication even at its most complex, and that the underlying principles are not related. Accordingly, Thomas A. Sebeok has proposed not to use the term 'language' in case of animal sign systems.
Others argue that an evolutionary continuum exists between the communication methods these animals use and human language. Examining this continuum could help explain how humanity evolved its incredibly sophisticated proficiency for language.
The following properties of human language have been argued to separate it from animal communication:
Research with apes
, like that of Francine Patterson
with Koko
or Herbert Terrace with Nim Chimpsky
, suggested that apes are capable of using language that meets some of these requirements such as arbitrariness, cultural transmission, discreteness and productivity. However, no experiment has yet shown a non-human being to be proficient in all of these areas.
In the wild chimpanzee
s have been seen "talking" to each other, when warning about approaching danger. For example, if one chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes a low, rumbling noise, signalling for all the other chimps to climb into nearby trees. In this case, the chimpanzees' communication is entirely contained to an observable event, demonstrating a lack of displacement.
Arbitrariness has been noted in meerkat
calls; bee dances show elements of spatial displacement; and cultural transmission has possibly occurred between the celebrated bonobo
s Kanzi
and Panbanisha.
Human language may not be completely "arbitrary". Some research has shown that almost all humans naturally demonstrate limited crossmodal perception
(e.g. synesthesia
), as illustrated by the Kiki and Booba study.
Claims that animals have language skills akin to humans however, are extremely controversial. As Pinker illustrates in his book the "The Language Instinct", claims that chimpanzees can acquire language are exaggerated and rest on very limited or specious data.
The most studied examples of animal languages are:
call studies). Thus "animal language" typically does not include bee dancing, bird song, whale song, dolphin signature whistles, prairie dogs, nor the communicative systems found in most social mammals. The features of language as listed above are a dated formulation by Hockett in 1960. Through this formulation Hockett made one of the earliest attempts to break down features of human language for the purpose of applying Darwinian gradualism. Although an influence on early animal language efforts (see below), is today not considered the key architecture at the core of "animal language" research.
Animal Language results are controversial for several reasons. (For a related controversy, see also Clever Hans
.) In the 1970s John Lilly
was attempting to "break the code": to fully communicate ideas and concepts with wild populations of dolphins so that we could "speak" to them, and share our cultures, histories, and more. This effort failed.
The very early [chimpanzee] work was with chimpanzee infants raised as if they were human; a test of the nature vs. nurture hypothesis.
Chimpanzees have a laryngeal structure very different from that of humans, as well as no voluntary control of their breathing. This combination made it very difficult for the chimpanzees to reproduce the vocal intonations required for human language. Researchers eventually moved towards a gestural (sign language) modality, as well as "keyboard" devices laden with buttons adorned with symbols (known as "lexigrams") that the animals could press to produce artificial language. Other chimpanzees learned by observing human subjects performing the task.
This latter group of researchers studying chimpanzee communication through symbol recognition (keyboard) as well as through the use of sign language (gestural), are on the forefront of communicative breakthroughs in the study of animal language, and they are familiar with their subjects on a first name basis: Sarah, Lana, Kanzi, Koko, Sherman, Austin and Chantek.
Perhaps the best known critic of "Animal Language" is Herbert Terrace. Terrace's 1979 criticism using his own research with the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky
was scathing and basically spelled the end of animal language research in that era, most of which emphasized the production of language by animals. In short, he accused researchers of over-interpreting their results, especially as it is rarely parsimonious to ascribe true intentional "language production" when other simpler explanations for the behaviors (gestural hand signs) could be put forth. Also, his animals failed to show generalization of the concept of reference between the modalities of comprehension and production; this generalization is one of many fundamental ones that are trivial for human language use. The simpler explanation according to Terrace was that the animals had learned a sophisticated series of context-based behavioral strategies to obtain either primary (food) or social reinforcement
, behaviors that could be over-interpreted as language use.
In 1985 during this anti-Animal Language backlash, Louis Herman
published an account of artificial language in the bottlenosed dolphin in the journal Cognition. A major difference between Herman's work and previous research was his emphasis on a method of studying language comprehension only (rather than language comprehension and production by the animal(s)), which enabled rigorous controls and statistical tests, largely because he was limiting his researchers to evaluating the animals' physical behaviors (in response to sentences) with blinded observers, rather than attempting to interpret possible language utterances or productions. The dolphins' names here were Akeakamai
and Phoenix. Irene Pepperberg
used the vocal modality for language production and comprehension in an African Grey Parrot
named Alex
in the verbal mode, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh continues to study Bonobos such as Kanzi
and Panbanisha. R. Schusterman duplicated many of the dolphin results in his California Sea Lions ("Rocky"), and came from a more behaviorist tradition than Herman's cognitive approach. Schusterman's emphasis is on the importance on a learning structure known as "equivalence classes."
However, overall, there has not been any meaningful dialog between the linguistics and animal language spheres, despite capturing the public's imagination in the popular press. Also, the growing field of language evolution is another source of future interchange between these disciplines. Most primate researchers tend to show a bias toward a shared pre-linguistic ability between humans and chimpanzees, dating back to a common ancestor, while dolphin and parrot researchers stress the general cognitive principles underlying these abilities. More recent related controversies regarding animal abilities include the closely linked areas of Theory of mind
, Imitation (e.g. Nehaniv & Dautenhahn, 2002), Animal Culture (e.g. Rendell & Whitehead, 2001), and Language Evolution (e.g. Christiansen & Kirby, 2003).
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
.
Some researchers including the linguist Charles Hockett
Charles F. Hockett
Charles Francis Hockett was an American linguist who developed many influential ideas in American structuralist linguistics. He represents the post-Bloomfieldian phase of structuralism often referred to as "distributionalism" or "taxonomic structuralism"...
, who proposed a list of design features of Human Language, argue that there are significant differences separating human language from animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
communication even at its most complex, and that the underlying principles are not related. Accordingly, Thomas A. Sebeok has proposed not to use the term 'language' in case of animal sign systems.
Others argue that an evolutionary continuum exists between the communication methods these animals use and human language. Examining this continuum could help explain how humanity evolved its incredibly sophisticated proficiency for language.
Aspects of human language
- Arbitrariness: There is not necessarily a rational relationship between a sound or sign and its meaning. (There is nothing intrinsically "housy" about the word "house". i.e. symbolism)
- Cultural transmission: Language is passed from one language user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
- Discreteness: Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.
- DisplacementDisplacement (linguistics)In linguistics, displacement is the capability of human language to communicate about things that are not immediately present.In 1960, Charles F. Hockett proposed displacement as one of 13 "design-features" that distinguish human language from animal language:...
: Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally, or both. - Duality: Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
- Metalinguistics: Ability to discuss language itself.
- Productivity: A finite number of units can be used to create an indefinitely large number of utterances.
Research with apes
Great Ape language
Research into non-human great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans to communicate with human beings and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, and lexigrams; see Yerkish...
, like that of Francine Patterson
Francine Patterson
Dr. "Penny" Patterson is an American researcher who taught a modified form of American Sign Language, which she calls "Gorilla Sign Language", or GSL, to a gorilla named Koko....
with Koko
Koko (gorilla)
Koko is a female western lowland gorilla who, according to Francine "Penny" Patterson, is able to understand more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and understand approximately 2,000 words of spoken English....
or Herbert Terrace with Nim Chimpsky
Nim Chimpsky
Nim Chimpsky was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace....
, suggested that apes are capable of using language that meets some of these requirements such as arbitrariness, cultural transmission, discreteness and productivity. However, no experiment has yet shown a non-human being to be proficient in all of these areas.
In the wild chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s have been seen "talking" to each other, when warning about approaching danger. For example, if one chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes a low, rumbling noise, signalling for all the other chimps to climb into nearby trees. In this case, the chimpanzees' communication is entirely contained to an observable event, demonstrating a lack of displacement.
Arbitrariness has been noted in meerkat
Meerkat
The meerkat or suricate, Suricata suricatta, is a small mammal belonging to the mongoose family. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a "mob", "gang" or "clan"...
calls; bee dances show elements of spatial displacement; and cultural transmission has possibly occurred between the celebrated bonobo
Bonobo
The bonobo , Pan paniscus, previously called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee, is a great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan. The other species in genus Pan is Pan troglodytes, or the common chimpanzee...
s Kanzi
Kanzi
Kanzi , also known by the lexigram , is a male bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude.- Biography :Born to Lorel and...
and Panbanisha.
Human language may not be completely "arbitrary". Some research has shown that almost all humans naturally demonstrate limited crossmodal perception
Crossmodal
Crossmodal perception or cross-modal perception is perception that involves interactions between two or more different sensory modalities. Examples include synesthesia, sensory substitution, and the McGurk effect, in which vision and hearing interact in speech perception.Crossmodal perception,...
(e.g. synesthesia
Synesthesia
Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...
), as illustrated by the Kiki and Booba study.
Claims that animals have language skills akin to humans however, are extremely controversial. As Pinker illustrates in his book the "The Language Instinct", claims that chimpanzees can acquire language are exaggerated and rest on very limited or specious data.
Non-Primates: Studied examples
The most studied examples of animal languages are:
- Bee dance - used to communicate direction and distance of food source in many species of bees.
- Bird songBird songBird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.-Definition:The distinction between songs and calls is based upon...
s - songbirds can be very articulate. African Grey ParrotAfrican Grey ParrotThe African Grey Parrot , also known as the Grey Parrot, is a medium-sized parrot found in the primary and secondary rainforest of West and Central Africa. Experts regard it as one of the most intelligent birds. They feed primarily on palm nuts, seeds, fruits, leafy matter, but have been observed...
s are famous for their ability to mimic human language, and at least one specimen, AlexAlex (parrot)Alex was an African Grey Parrot and the subject of a thirty-year experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. Pepperberg bought Alex in a regular pet shop when he was about one year old...
, appeared able to answer a number of simple questions about objects he was presented with. Parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds- display vocal learning patterns. - Whale songWhale songWhale sounds are the sounds made by whales and which are used for different kinds of communication.The word "song" is used to describe the pattern of regular and predictable sounds made by some species of whales, notably the Humpback Whale...
s - Two groups of whales, the Humpback WhaleHumpback WhaleThe humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from and weigh approximately . The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the...
and the subspecies of Blue WhaleBlue WhaleThe blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales . At in length and or more in weight, it is the largest known animal to have ever existed....
found in the Indian OceanIndian OceanThe Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
, are known to produce the repetitious sounds at varying frequencies known as whale song. Male Humpback Whales perform these vocalizations only during the mating season, and so it is surmised the purpose of songs is to aid sexual selection. Humpbacks also make a sound called the feeding call. This is a long sound (5 to 10 s duration) of near constant frequency. Humpbacks generally feed cooperatively by gathering in groups, swimming underneath shoals of fish and all lunging up vertically through the fish and out of the water together. Prior to these lunges, whales make their feeding call. The exact purpose of the call is not known, but research suggests that fish react to it. When the sound was played back to them, a group of herring responded to the sound by moving away from the call, even though no whale was present. - Prairie dogPrairie dogPrairie dogs are burrowing rodents native to the grasslands of North America. There are five different species of prairie dogs: black-tailed, white-tailed, Gunnison's, Utah and Mexican prairie dogs. They are a type of ground squirrel, found in the United States, Canada and Mexico...
language: Dr. SlobodchikoffCon SlobodchikoffConstantine 'Con' Slobodchikoff is an animal behaviorist and conservation biologist. He is a professor at Northern Arizona University where he studies referential communication, using prairie dogs as a model species. Much of his recent research has shown a complex communicative ability of the...
studied prairie dog communication and made the following discoveries. His current findings are that prairie dogs have:- different alarm calls for different species of predators;
- different escape behaviors for different species of predators;
- transmission of semantic information, in that playbacks of alarm calls in the absence of predators lead to escape behaviors that are appropriate to the type of predator which elicited the alarm calls;
- alarm calls containing descriptive information about the general size, color, and speed of travel of the predator.
- Caribbean Reef SquidCaribbean Reef SquidThe Caribbean Reef Squid , also known as just the Reef Squid, is a small torpedo-shaped squid with fins that extend nearly the entire length of the body and undulate rapidly as it swims...
have been shown to communicate using a variety of color, shape, and texture changes. Squid are capable of rapid changes in skin color and pattern through nervous control of chromatophoreChromatophoreChromatophores are pigment-containing and light-reflecting cells found in amphibians, fish, reptiles, crustaceans, and cephalopods. They are largely responsible for generating skin and eye colour in cold-blooded animals and are generated in the neural crest during embryonic development...
s. In addition to camoflauge and appearing larger in the face of a threat, squids use color, patterns, and flashing to communicate with one another in various courtship rituals. Caribbean Reef Squid can send one message via color patterns to a squid on their right, while they send another message to a squid on their left.
Comparison of the term with "animal communication"
It is worth distinguishing "animal language" from "animal communication", no matter how complex the latter may be. In general the term "animal language" is reserved for the modeling of human language in animal systems; though there is some comparative interchange in certain cases (e.g. Cheney & Seyfarth's vervet monkeyVervet Monkey
The vervet monkey , or simply vervet, is an Old World monkey of the family Cercopithecidae native to Africa. The term "vervet" is also used to refer to all the members of the genus Chlorocebus....
call studies). Thus "animal language" typically does not include bee dancing, bird song, whale song, dolphin signature whistles, prairie dogs, nor the communicative systems found in most social mammals. The features of language as listed above are a dated formulation by Hockett in 1960. Through this formulation Hockett made one of the earliest attempts to break down features of human language for the purpose of applying Darwinian gradualism. Although an influence on early animal language efforts (see below), is today not considered the key architecture at the core of "animal language" research.
Clever Hans
Clever Hans was an Orlov Trotter horse that was claimed to have been able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks....
.) In the 1970s John Lilly
John C. Lilly
John Cunningham Lilly was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher and writer....
was attempting to "break the code": to fully communicate ideas and concepts with wild populations of dolphins so that we could "speak" to them, and share our cultures, histories, and more. This effort failed.
The very early [chimpanzee] work was with chimpanzee infants raised as if they were human; a test of the nature vs. nurture hypothesis.
Chimpanzees have a laryngeal structure very different from that of humans, as well as no voluntary control of their breathing. This combination made it very difficult for the chimpanzees to reproduce the vocal intonations required for human language. Researchers eventually moved towards a gestural (sign language) modality, as well as "keyboard" devices laden with buttons adorned with symbols (known as "lexigrams") that the animals could press to produce artificial language. Other chimpanzees learned by observing human subjects performing the task.
This latter group of researchers studying chimpanzee communication through symbol recognition (keyboard) as well as through the use of sign language (gestural), are on the forefront of communicative breakthroughs in the study of animal language, and they are familiar with their subjects on a first name basis: Sarah, Lana, Kanzi, Koko, Sherman, Austin and Chantek.
Perhaps the best known critic of "Animal Language" is Herbert Terrace. Terrace's 1979 criticism using his own research with the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky
Nim Chimpsky
Nim Chimpsky was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace....
was scathing and basically spelled the end of animal language research in that era, most of which emphasized the production of language by animals. In short, he accused researchers of over-interpreting their results, especially as it is rarely parsimonious to ascribe true intentional "language production" when other simpler explanations for the behaviors (gestural hand signs) could be put forth. Also, his animals failed to show generalization of the concept of reference between the modalities of comprehension and production; this generalization is one of many fundamental ones that are trivial for human language use. The simpler explanation according to Terrace was that the animals had learned a sophisticated series of context-based behavioral strategies to obtain either primary (food) or social reinforcement
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of increasing the rate or probability of a behavior in the form of a "response" by the delivery or emergence of a stimulus Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of...
, behaviors that could be over-interpreted as language use.
In 1985 during this anti-Animal Language backlash, Louis Herman
Louis Herman
Louis Herman is a researcher of dolphin sensory abilities, dolphin cognition, and humpback whales. He is currently professor in the Department of Psychology and a cooperating faculty member of the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa...
published an account of artificial language in the bottlenosed dolphin in the journal Cognition. A major difference between Herman's work and previous research was his emphasis on a method of studying language comprehension only (rather than language comprehension and production by the animal(s)), which enabled rigorous controls and statistical tests, largely because he was limiting his researchers to evaluating the animals' physical behaviors (in response to sentences) with blinded observers, rather than attempting to interpret possible language utterances or productions. The dolphins' names here were Akeakamai
Akeakamai
Akeakamai was a female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, who along with a companion female dolphin named Phoenix, as well as tankmates Elele and Hiapo, were the subjects of Louis Herman's animal language studies at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii...
and Phoenix. Irene Pepperberg
Irene Pepperberg
Irene Maxine Pepperberg is a scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She is an adjunct professor of psychology at Brandeis University and a lecturer at Harvard University...
used the vocal modality for language production and comprehension in an African Grey Parrot
African Grey Parrot
The African Grey Parrot , also known as the Grey Parrot, is a medium-sized parrot found in the primary and secondary rainforest of West and Central Africa. Experts regard it as one of the most intelligent birds. They feed primarily on palm nuts, seeds, fruits, leafy matter, but have been observed...
named Alex
Alex (parrot)
Alex was an African Grey Parrot and the subject of a thirty-year experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. Pepperberg bought Alex in a regular pet shop when he was about one year old...
in the verbal mode, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh continues to study Bonobos such as Kanzi
Kanzi
Kanzi , also known by the lexigram , is a male bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude.- Biography :Born to Lorel and...
and Panbanisha. R. Schusterman duplicated many of the dolphin results in his California Sea Lions ("Rocky"), and came from a more behaviorist tradition than Herman's cognitive approach. Schusterman's emphasis is on the importance on a learning structure known as "equivalence classes."
However, overall, there has not been any meaningful dialog between the linguistics and animal language spheres, despite capturing the public's imagination in the popular press. Also, the growing field of language evolution is another source of future interchange between these disciplines. Most primate researchers tend to show a bias toward a shared pre-linguistic ability between humans and chimpanzees, dating back to a common ancestor, while dolphin and parrot researchers stress the general cognitive principles underlying these abilities. More recent related controversies regarding animal abilities include the closely linked areas of Theory of mind
Theory of mind
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own...
, Imitation (e.g. Nehaniv & Dautenhahn, 2002), Animal Culture (e.g. Rendell & Whitehead, 2001), and Language Evolution (e.g. Christiansen & Kirby, 2003).
Further reading
Selected References from Primate, Parrot, Marine Mammal animal language programs, as well as the Linguistics literature:- Bickerton, D.Derek BickertonDerek Bickerton is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages provide powerful insights into the development of language both by individuals and as a...
(2005). Language evolution: a brief guide for linguists. link - Chomsky, N.Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
(1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Reprint. Berlin and New York (1985). - Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
- Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Chomsky, N. & Lasnik, H. (1993). The theory of principles and parameters, in: J. Jacobs A. von Stechow, W. Sternefeld, and T. Vennemann (eds.) Syntax: an international handbook of contemporary research. Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Christiansen, M.H. & Kirby, S.H. (Eds.)(2003). Language Evolution: The States of the Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Deacon, T. W. (1997) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Human Brain. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press.
- Gardner R. Allen and Gardner Beatrice T. (1980) Comparative psychology and language acquisition. In Thomas A. Sebok and Jean-Umiker-Sebok (eds.): Speaking of Apes: A Critical Anthology of Two-Way Communication with Man. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 287–329.
- Hayes, C. (1951). The Ape in Our House. New York: Harper & Row.
- Holder, M. D., Herman, L. M. & Kuczaj, S. III (1993). A bottlenosed dolphin's responses to anomalous gestural sequences expressed within an artificial gestural language. In H. R. Roitblat, L. M. Herman & P.E. Nachtigall (Eds): Language and Communication: Comparative Perspectives, 299-308. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Hurford J.R., Studdert-Kennedy, M., & Knight, C. (Eds.) (1998) Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Kellogg, W.N., & Kellogg, L.A. (1933). The ape and the child. New York: Whittlesey House (McGraw-Hill).
- Knight, C., Studdert-Kennedy, M., Hurford, J.R. (Eds.) (2000). The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Kohts. N. (1935). Infant ape and human child. Museum Darwinianum, Moscow.
- Ladygina-Kohts, N.N, & de Waal, F.B.M. (2002). Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child: A Classic 1935 Comparative Study of Ape Emotions and Intelligence (Tr: B. Vekker). New York: Oxford University Press.
- Miles, H.L. (1990) "The cognitive foundations for reference in a signing orangutan" in S.T. Parker and K.R. Gibson (eds.) "Language" and intelligence in monkeys and apes: Comparative Developmental Perspectives. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- Nehaniv C. & Dautenhahn, K.(Eds.) (2002). Imitation in Animals and Artifacts. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
- Patterson, F., and Linden, E. (1981) The Education of Koko. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
- Pepperberg, I.M. (1999). The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative abilities of Grey Parrots. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Pinker, S. (1984). Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reprinted in 1996 with additional commentary.
- Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: how the mind creates language. New York: William Morrow & Co.
- Plooij, F.X. (1978). "Some basic traits of language in wild chimpanzees?" in A. Lock (ed.) Action, Gesture and Symbol. New York: Academic Press.
- Roitblat, H.R., Herman, L.M. & Nachtigall, P.E. (Eds.)(1993). Language and Communication: Comparative Perspectives, 299-308. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Rumbaugh Duane M. (1980) Language behavior of apes. In Thomas A. Sebok and Jean-Umiker-Sebok(eds.): Speaking of Apes: A Critical Anthology of Two- Way Communication with Man. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 231–259.
- Sayigh, L.S., Tyack, P.L., Wells, R.S. & Scott, M.D. (1990). Signature whistles of free-ranging bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): stability and mother-offspring comparisons. Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, 247-260.
- Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Terrace, H. S. (1979). Nim. New York: Knopf.
- Wittmann, HenriHenri WittmannHenri Wittmann is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.-Biography:Henri Wittmann was born in Alsace in 1937...
(1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215-88.http://homepage.mac.com/noula/ling/1991a-class.pdf
External links
- Discussion: Starling Study: Recursion (Linguist List)
- International Bioacoustics Council research on animal language.
- The Animal Communication Project. More information on animal communication.
- Excellent compendium of links to the websites of all of the major animal language studies
- Listen to Nature includes article "The Language of Birds"
- Jarvis Lab homepage Evolution of Brain Structure for Vocal Learning
- :de:Linguogenetik