Language-like abilities in animals
In the introduction, we raised the question of whether non-human animal species show cognitive and communicative abilities that are a requirement for developing something corresponding in any significant way to human language abilities. In spite of all the problems and questions that we were concerned with, there is little doubt that animals exhibit a number of remarkable abilities. Note that our concern was not with what animals cannot do, nor with how they acquired what they can do, but simply with what they can do. And according to some researchers, they can do a lot. Dogs have been found to be able to arrange elementary signs into 212 combinations of signs (Fleischer 1990), and Premack (1976: 331–2) claims that humans and chimpanzees share the following striking similarities: (a) Both species have ‘‘rich’’ conceptual structures, being able to distinguish between agent, object, action, etc.; (b) both species symbolize, that is, use one thing to represent another, and do so with regard to all possible kinds of things; and (c) both species are said to have syntax independent of semantics or general cognition, and their basic logical structure is the same, chimpanzee syntax differing only in detail.
While this depiction is not shared by most of the other researchers who have worked on animal behavior, we saw in fact that there is an impressive catalog of abilities to be found at least in some animals exposed to language training, especially the abilities listed in (2) below. Note that these abilities have not all been observed in one particular animal; rather, they represent the total of all abilities that we found, and they are confined essentially to animals that received some regimented teaching.
(2) Possible language-like abilities of some non-human animals
a. to understand salient characteristics of concepts;
b. to distinguish form–meaning pairings (‘‘words’’);
c. to acquire form–meaning pairings of more than 100 items, including items denoting objects, actions, and some numbers;
d. to handle functional items for negation and interrogation;
e. to have an elementary understanding of the notion of deixis;
f. to use an elementary argument structure;
g. to acquire some understanding of linear arrangement of form meaning pairings;
h. to conjoin propositions and/or form–meaning pairings;
i. to acquire some basics of taxonomic hierarchy as it manifests itself in inclusion and part–whole relations.
On account of observations, we concur with Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky (in press: 13), who suggest that the safest assumption at present is that the mechanisms underlying human speech perception were largely in place before language evolved, and with Kako (1999: 12), who concludes that ‘‘several of the core properties of human syntax lie within the grasp of other animals.’’
