A great deal has been published in both magazines and newspapers during the past few years about the so-called "language" of animals, especially apes and monkeys, the term being somewhat loosely used to denote articulate speech.The unusualness of this undertaking at once attracted the attention of the newspapers. Every actual and many purely imaginary phases of the scheme were written about at great length, and generally by reporters who were much more anxious to produce a "good story" than to present the subject in any of its scientific aspects. In consequence there was given the widest publicity to an immense amount of the veriest nonsense, from which the average person who depends entirely upon his newspaper for his information is likely to have formed an entirely false perception of this very interesting matter.
-George Gladden
give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you
Mimetic Lay observers
Associative Behaviorists
Conceptual/
Contextual Biologists
Peri-referential Psychologists
Fully Referential Linguists
Correct response Incorrect response
Question (# times made) (# times made)
What's same? color, 11 none, 1
shape, 10 matter, 1; none, 2
matter, 14 color, 2
none, 12 shape, 1; matter, 1
What's different? color, 13 shape, 1; matter, 1; none, 1
shape, 12 color, 2
matter, 10 shape, 1; none, 2
none, 12 color, 1; shape, 1
The acoustic signal that the parrot produces when it "talks" is not equivalent to that of human speech becuase birds cannot inherently produce the sounds of human speech (Greenewalt, 1968). Human listeners interpret the parrot's acoustic signal as speech although it is distorted. - P. Lieberman, 1991Alex must/does
