The Five Human Language Features Of The Ape

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Recommended: Full analysis of animal communication

Creatures on earth use various ways to communicate. Animals frequently using sound as a signal consist with messages they want to send. Although the human language uses lots of arbitrary symbols, and human language is passed from generation to generation, there are several successful cases of training other animals to use human language. Whether or not animals are able to use human language is a controversial topic. In my opinion, an ape does use language, this essay will discuss five human language features(dual articulation, semanticity, productivity, learnability and feedback)and, find out how design features appear in several chimpanzee experiments, especially Allen and Beatrice 's experiment of teaching sign language to chimpanzee.

Many …show more content…

For example, chimpanzee Washoe made her own sign language 'tickle ', the description is based on ALS 'touch '(Allen & Beatrice, 1969) and chimpanzee Sarah, who use the chimp shaped plastic token to represent herself and, she think a small red square token means banana. Scientists also found that chimpanzees do produce multi-word sequences. In Washoe 's sign language experiment, she used sign language that as 'gimme tickle ' which means come and tickle me as well as 'open food drink ' which means open the fridge. Washoe and Sarah has limited language productivity, and from linguists research humans tend to reuse the same simple phrases all the time, we are not actually employing this productive potential of our …show more content…

In Kellogg 's experiment, Gua was given special daily training to say the word “pa-pa”, and they recorded the process of how she pronounce these syllables, 'she was laid face upward upon the experimenter 's lap while she slowly and distinctly uttered the syllables pa-pa '(Withrop & Luella 1933,

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