JOURNAL ENTRY 1

Is Language Unique to Humans

When Alex unexpectedly passed away after only thirty-one years of life, his last words to his dearest friend were, "You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you." A touching sentiment indeed, but all the more impressive because Alex was an African Grey Parrot. Over the course of thirty years of work between psychologist Irene Pepperberg and Alex, purchased from a Chicago pet store at one year of age, the parrot amassed a vocabulary of some 150 words. According to one report, he was able to recognize fifty different objects, could count quantities up to six, and could distinguish among seven colors and five shapes. He also understood the ideas of "bigger" and "smaller", and "same" and "different".

Alex isn’t the only non-human to display such talents. Kanzi is a 31-year-old male bonobo who lives in a small social group with others of his species at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. Bonobos, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. After years of working with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi can now understand several thousand words, and can communicate using a kind of keyboard that contains around 400 visual symbols called lexigrams.

Then there's Rico, a border collie who knows the labels of around 200 different items, and can retrieve them on command. Compared to Alex and Kanzi, this might not seem particularly impressive or interesting. However, Rico can learn the label of an item that he's never seen before after only hearing the word once. If there are 20 items in front of him, 19 of which he already knows the labels for, and he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never heard before, Rico can infer that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word. Weeks later, he still remembers the pairing. This process of word-learning, called fast-mapping, is identical to the process through which young children learn new words. 

Not to be outdone by the feathered or furry, there is the female Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Akeakamai and Phoenix who lived at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. A famous paper by marine biologist Louis Herman and colleagues in 1984 described Akeakamai and Phoenix's abilities to understand sentences in visual or acoustic artificial languages.

The researchers gave the dolphins instructions constructed entirely of familiar words, but in various combinations that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the sentences, not just the vocabulary. For example, "Phoenix Akeakamai Over" was an instruction for Phoenix to swim to Akeakamai and jump over her, while "Akeakamai Surfboard Fetch Speaker" instructed Akeakamai to get the surfboard and bring it to the speaker. In each case the dolphin had to interpret the verb "over" or "fetch" according to the noun: did "fetch" apply to the surfboard or to the speaker, for instance?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121016-is-language-unique-to-humans/1


THREE EXAMPLES FOR EACH CATEGORY


Adjective : last, impressive, different

Verb :  understand, give, apply

Transitive verb : love, display, see

Intransitive verb : pass away,work, call

Linking verb : be able to, is, seem

Action verb : retrieve, swim, jump over

Stative verb : live, remember, learn

Place adverb : over, there

Time adverb : after, tomorrow, now

Adverb of  manner : unexpectedly, particularly, entirely

Direct object : object, quantity, idea

Indirect object : symbol, word, instruction

Subject : Chicago, Alex, Des Moneis

Phrase : thirty-one years of life, fifty different objects, new words

Interrogative pronoun : who, which

Personal pronoun : he, it, you

Indefinite pronoun : all

Common noun : year, word, friend

Proper noun : Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory

Singular noun : speaker, noun, dolphin

Plural noun : talents, researchers, languages

Dependent clause : 19 of which he already knows the labels for
                                     
                                     that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word

                                     that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the                                               sentences,not just the vocabulary

Independent clause :  he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never 

heard before

                                         He also understood the ideas of "bigger" and "smaller", and "same" and "different".