Free The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally Page A

chimpanzee had to retrieve one from the refrigerator in order to complete the request. This she did. But instead of putting the vegetable in the microwave, she took it to the sink and proceeded to wash it. Somewhere between the retrieval process and the end task, the request became scrambled for the chimp. In similar situations, Panpanzee’s incorrect response suggested she was falling back on her knowledge of routines, rather than correctly remembering a novel request (something people occasionally find themselves doing as well).
    Sometimes language mistakes can be as useful as correct responses. Eliciting errors in human speech is one of the main methods that psycholinguists use to expose the mental strategies that underpin language use. Spoonerisms, for example, aren’t just sound swaps: “pea tot” (teapot), “dood gog” (good dog), and “band hag” (handbag) suggest that speech is not entirely spontaneous. If a speaker accidentally begins a word with the first sound of the next word, he must be planning what he is about to say, even if he is not aware of it.
    Lyn analyzed eleven years’ worth of Kanzi’s and Panbanisha’s language error data and found that when the apes accidentally pressed one keyboard picture instead of another, or when they misunderstood a spoken word, their errors usually revealed an underlying connection between the intended word and the mistaken one. Just like humans, the apes made category substitutions, like mistaking colors, such as red for black. They made word association errors, confusing the names of locations with items that were found in those locations. And they made phonological (sound) errors, like using a word because it rhymed with the intended word.
    Lyn and colleagues found that Panbanisha and Panpanzee have more symbol ordering rules in common with each other than with their caretaker. It’s possible, even probable, that the last common ancestor between these apes and humans had the ability to understand meaning-based ordering strategies. Lyn also found that these apes have a gesture-last rule: they always touch the lexigram, and then gesture in the real world.
    Bonobos acquire language up to the level of human children. For example, they can understand sentences that contain one verb and a three-noun phrase (“Will you carry the M&M’s to the middle test room?”), but they have trouble with conjoined sentences that require two separate actions (“Bring me the ball and the orange”). They do not speak English words, though they attempt to do so. Their short-term memory seems to be only half the capacity of human children’s, so they are not as good at imitating a series of utterances without a lot of repetition. 5 The more complicated syntax gets, the more trouble they have with it.
    The ape language research led Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleagues to conclude that language consists of “a large number of component parts and interacting functions.” 6 Even though their work has not had the impact of Chomsky’s, most researchers in language evolution would today think about language in these terms.
     
     
     
    What’s most striking about the older criticism of ape language research is its basic attitude, which is more motivated to discredit than evaluate. In much ALR commentary, there is a strong sense that the critics have already made up their minds before arguing or offering reasons why ape language couldn’t work. There are claims of falsifying data and even of people being out to get each other. In the 1980s the debate was rarely conducted without tones of disdain and contempt.
    Even now, scholars who work with animal language are often characterized as daft idealists or outright frauds, believing that beneath the fur or behind the beak are creatures with souls. Yet if you speak to these researchers, you won’t find anyone downplaying the enormous differences between humans and other animals, despite the fact that they happen to be interested in the