Talk:Great ape language

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[edit] Language of opening paragraph

I'm trying to achieve some neutrality in the opening paragraph, specifically the sentences stating:

"Research into great ape language has shown that apes can communicate in a primitive way. Gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught sign language and can communicate with tokens and lexigrams (keyboards with symbols on them)."

The above is biased because it strongly assumes that great apes positively are communicating, although elsewhere in the article it is admitted that notable scientists dispute that this is the case. The facts can be conveyed without the POV, if we state what is known... that the apes have learned these behaviors, and research suggests that they are using these behaviors to communicate. This leaves it open to both sides. The Hokkaido Crow 01:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

As I understand it, apes have not been "taught sign language." I'm getting this from Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works mostly: the "sign language" that chimps/apes/etc. learned was a set of gestures linked to actions and objects. A typical utterance was "Me banana you banana me you give." See [1] and [2]. In contrast, real sign languages are not Me-Tarzan-You-Jane gesture systems but have the full grammatical complexity of spoken speech. Pinker discounts researchers' claims of the apes' achievements, citing suspicious concealment of data, and concludes that there's no clear evidence that the apes "get" the difference between "me tickle" and "tickle me." The apes seem to be able to learn some aspects of language, as parrots and dolphins have, but are missing the key concept of grammar. So, it's misleading to say that they know "sign language." I'll propose a slight change to reflect this. --Kris Schnee 21:06, 28 March 2006 (UTC) (former assistant of Irene Pepperberg)

[edit] Problems

  • Confusion between natural communiction and modeling of human language in animals
  • opening sentence with "lots of"
  • entire article largely redundant with animal language, which is another article which also needs significant workSantaduck 22:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple articles on this topic

This article is one of at least 16 articles on Wikipedia primarily about the fascinating but controversial subject of Great ape language. These articles have been created independently and contain much interesting but uncoordinated information, varying levels of NPOV, and differences in categorization, stubbing, and references. Those of us working on them should explore better coordinating our efforts so as to share the best we have created and avoid unnecessary duplication. I have somewhat arbitrarily put the list of 16 articles here and short remarks on the talk pages of the others. I would encourage us to informally coordinate efforts here. Martinp 17:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

(note I ran out of time putting notes on this on talk pages after I got here; will hopefully return when I have time or anyone else go ahead) Martinp 02:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coordination approach

Do we need a Wikiproject or shall we do this just informally? Martinp 17:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I think doing it informally for now would be good. There really aren't enough contributors or articles to warrant a WikiProject as of yet. - FrancisTyers 18:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Things to be done

(My take - changes welcome)

  • Inventory the above articles on NPOV and tag as POV/controversial if appropriate (I'm not sure whether the "npov" tag or "controversial" is better, but let's choose one. I'd avoid "disputed", since I think the question is more one of controversy than factual dispute) Many of the above pages are POV in presupposing language use has occurred. One at least (the ASL article) is POV the other way. On some (e.g. Koko) a bona fide attempt has been made to be POV.
  • Align wikilinks between these articles - most articles point to a random selection of the others; should consider what makes sense for each one
  • Extract the good elements of the discussion of "Is this language use?" in several articles, centralize it somewhere (maybe here in Great Ape Language, there's a good start), and hammer out an informative NPOV version that describes the claims and the controversy pertaining to all the apes in question. Specific places where I've noticed good content (not exhaustive) are Great ape language (this article) and (to slightly beat my own drum) at Koko (gorilla). There is also good discussion on a number of talk pages, such as Talk:Kanzi (now beating FrancisTyers' drum).
  • Adjust the non-NPOV articles to be NPOV (this is a framing, not a content question) and refer to the centralized discussion on ape language for details of the controversy (except elements specific to any one specific ape, e.g. signing instruction by Washoe to Loulis
  • Try to find some pictures we can use within Wikipedia's licensing requirements
  • Add elements about the question of what has happened to these apes after the "experiments" concluded -- see popular books by Eugene Linden, maybe there is more

-- Martinp 02:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

See also: Nyota (pygmy chimp), and animal language acquisition. I wonder if these efforts can be extended to the pages on animal language (or even animal communication) in general. Here are some non-ape animals involved in language experiments:
ntennis 03:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "capable of using human modes of communication"

Given that "human modes of communication" include everything from meaningful vocalization, sophisticated syntax, alphabetic writing systems, and internet chat, isn't the lead sentence here a little much? It seems to set an optimistic POV tone from the very start. Marskell 16:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Indonesian etc.

Just curious whether anyone has attempted to teach apes or chimpanzees languages such as Indonesian, that have a much simpler grammatical structure than English. I could see there being a lot of difficulties in understanding irregular past tense verbs, hotter vs. more beautiful (not beautifuler), that sort of thing. This isn't just a point for discussion - I would be interested in seeing this information added to the article if it exists. Mithridates 16:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I am told that Chinese language is also much simpler than English.69.215.113.206 13:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Sign languages, while having a complex spatial grammar, have a relatively simple grammar when compared to English in the traditional sense. There is very little tense, and what tense there is, it's regularly expressed by adverbs and not tense, superlatives are all regularized with a secondary sign (in ASL).
The notion of an "easier grammar" or "simpler grammar" is entirely subjective from a linguistic framework. It depends on the grammar of the native language of the learner, and in the case of children without a native language, the reesults are always the same... every language is simple for them to learn.
Basically, we've given them a language where to say "I'm hungry" you just sign "ME HUNGRY" and they can't even get that consistently correct. The documented use of Nim Chimpsky gave us quotes ranging the entire range of grammatical orders: "YOU TICKLE ME", "YOU ME TICKLE", "ME YOU TICKLE", "ME TICKLE YOU", "TICKLE ME YOU", "TICKLE YOU ME". It doesn't matter how simple of a grammar we have given Apes, they have been unable to pick up any grammatically significant usage at all. --Puellanivis 19:56, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
As Puellanivis hinted, it is very tricky to tell when one grammar is simpler than another. Usually it lies with the individual speaker. One speaker may routinely use intricate grammatical rules in a language, which other speakers of the same language do not apply or are even aware of. The written grammatical rules you read when you learn a foreign language are always a small (but vital) subset of all the actual rules.
I have no references for this as it is original research, or, to use another expression, own experience. Mlewan 20:50, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
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