We tortured a lot of apes to prove Noam Chomsky right: language was an innate human ability and not something other animals can learn. Even the apes that learned English words or sign never once asked a question.
Almost everything you’ve heard that an Ape “singed” was “interpreted” by a handler or trainer; the actual transcripts are not intelligible. I’m sure some researchers and trainers were acting in good faith, but you can see how much room to fudge there is.
Coco the gorilla was a fraud. (well, her handlers were frauds) for example, her handler often claimed that Coco would use rhymes to indicate what she “really” meant. The problem is that a native sign-language user would have no idea that two English words rhymed. Their are rhymes in sign, where the motions are similar, not the phonetics.
We tortured a lot of apes to prove Noam Chomsky right: language was an innate human ability and not something other animals can learn. Even the apes that learned English words or sign never once asked a question.
Almost everything you’ve heard that an Ape “singed” was “interpreted” by a handler or trainer; the actual transcripts are not intelligible. I’m sure some researchers and trainers were acting in good faith, but you can see how much room to fudge there is.
Coco the gorilla was a fraud. (well, her handlers were frauds) for example, her handler often claimed that Coco would use rhymes to indicate what she “really” meant. The problem is that a native sign-language user would have no idea that two English words rhymed. Their are rhymes in sign, where the motions are similar, not the phonetics.
lol no. Not in the absolute sense. Language IS NOT IN ANY WAY, “unique to humans”. Period. Ever.
In fact, there have been a few recent studies that show whale language is as complicated as Chinese.