{"id":142,"date":"2018-06-30T23:08:46","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T06:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/linguamonium.com\/?p=142"},"modified":"2021-04-25T20:14:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-25T20:14:30","slug":"koko-and-animal-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linguamonium.com\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Koko and animal \u201clanguage\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can animals have language the way humans have language? From recent news headlines about a famous ape and her passing, one might conclude: yes. Titles such as\u00a0\u201cKoko: Gorilla who mastered sign language dies in California\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cKoko, the Gorilla Who Knew Sign Language, Dies at 46\u201d<\/a> imply that non-human primates, at least, can learn and use language as humans do. So once again I’d like to call the media out on their frustrating inaccuracy.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

From the BBC (first article linked above):<\/p>\n

\u201cKoko the gorilla, who is said to have been able to communicate by using more than 1,000 hand signs, has died in California at the age of 46. Instructors taught her a version of American Sign Language and say she used it to convey thoughts and feelings. […] The gorilla [\u2026] could understand 2,000 words of spoken English.\u201d<\/p>\n

From NBC (older article<\/a> linked to second one above):<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2001, Williams visited the\u00a0Gorilla Foundation\u00a0in Northern California, where he met Koko, a gorilla who is fluent in American sign language\u201d<\/p>\n

By choosing words like master<\/em> and know <\/em>and fluent<\/em>, journalists are misinforming readers (whether this is intentional or out of ignorance, I\u2019m not sure). There are many differences between how Koko understood and used language and how humans understand and use it. Two obvious areas jump to mind: (1) vocabulary size; and (2) ease of learning. Regarding point one \u2013 adult native English speakers know between 270% – 500% more words than Koko[2]<\/a>. A 2016 study found that 20-year-olds were able to identify an average of 42,000 lemmas<\/strong> (dictionary headwords, e.g. run <\/em>for run<\/em>, runs<\/em>, ran<\/em>, and running<\/em>). The lowest 5% of the population in the study recognized 27,100 lemmas, and the highest 5% understood 51,700.[3]<\/a> While I couldn\u2019t find numbers for American Sign Language (ASL) speakers, I assume they would not be too far from the numbers for speakers of English. (Most ASL speakers are bilingual anyway, since they have learned English to read and interact with non-signers.)<\/p>\n

As for point two, the ease of learning \u2013 Koko had to be explicitly instructed over many years. Human children acquire a relatively complete grammar within about 5-8 years of being born, and they do this even in the absence of active teaching.<\/p>\n

More generally, major properties of human language which distinguish it from animal communication are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Arbitrariness <\/strong>\u2013 the relationship between sounds\/signs and their meanings is random.\n