On animal communication

Some cognitive abilities of animals

1. Introduction

Studies of trained animals in a laboratory environment:

Non-human primates Washoe and other chimpanzees (Gardner & Gardner 1969; 1978) Sarah and three other African-born chimpanzees (e.g., Premack 1976) Kanzi, the bonobo (e.g., Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin 1994) Koko, the lowland gorilla (Patterson 1978a; 1978b) Chantek, the orangutan (Miles 1978; 1983) Nim, the chimpanzee (e.g. Terrace 1983)

Non-primates Squirrel monkeys (Burdyn & Thomas 1984) Bottle-nosed dolphins (e.g., Herman 1987; 1989) Californian sea lions (Schusterman & Krieger 1984; Schusterman &

Gisiner 1988) Alex, the African Grey parrot (e.g., Pepperberg 1999b)

Communication systems:

Chimpanzee Washoe American Sign Language (ASL) Raising in an environment appropriate for a human child

living quarters with furniture, a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, toys, tools, etc. days made up of meals, naps, baths, play, schooling, and outings

Chimpanzee Sarah Object-word relationship

pieces of plastic, backed with metal adhering to a magnetized slate, each standing for some English word

Bonobo Kanzi Yerkish, an artificial lexigram system

portable, folding posterboard containing printed lexigram symbols

Orangutan Chantek “Pidgin” Sign English

based on gestural signs of ASL English word order little grammatical morphology

Chimpanzee Nim “Pidgin” sign language

Californian sea lions Rocky & Bucky Artificial gestural language

Bottle-nosed dolphins Phoenix & Ake Artificial languages

acoustic language and "dolphinized" version of a gestural language

Studies of animals in their natural behavior and environment:

Vervet monkey species Cheney and Seyfarth (1992)

Continuous period of 11 years Kenya's Amboseli National Park

Zuberbühler (2002), Zuberbühler, Cheney & Seyfarth (1999) Rainforest of the Ivory Coast

2. Animals’ linguistic abilities

Question:

Which traits in animal behavior may relate to language-related cognitive abilities?

2.1 Communicative intentions

Claim:

Non-human animal communication is restricted to imperatives.

But what is the communicative intention e.g. of the leopard, the eagle, and snake alarm calls of vervet monkeys?

Levels of intentionality

i. Zero-orderi. No beliefs or desires at all

ii. First-orderi. Beliefs and desiresii. No beliefs about beliefs

iii. Second-, third-, or higher-orderi. Some conception about one's own and other individuals’ states of mind

The communicative system of vervet monkeys (Cheney & Seyfarth 1990; 1992)

Four phonologically distinct and arbitrary calls→ representational signals standing for an (even invisible) object: Wrr → given when neighboring group has first been spotted Snake call

reaction: stand bipedally and peer into surrounding grass Leopard call

reaction: vervets on the ground run into trees Eagle call

reaction: look up or run into bushes

Observations:

Vervet monkeys’ calls are suggestive of first-order intentionality

reason: calling monkeys want others to run into trees, bushes, etc. not necessarily suggestive of second-order intentionality

in that case they would want others to think that there is a leopard, eagle, or python nearby

Most important motivation of animal communication is manipulative rather than declarative!

Terrace (1985) calls this motivation acquisitive: Communicative behavior of animals gears primarily at expressing

requests 96 % of the lexigram utterances made by bonobo Kanzi 86 % of all utterances (65 % for objects and 18 % for actions) in Rivas’

(2005) sample on five chimpanzees Chimpanzee signing = mostly acquisitive in nature

Note: Motivations of apes cannot be reduced to being manipulative! found signing when alone, e.g. looking at pictures in magazines imaginative play using signing, or talk to themselves

signing’s purpose unlikely to have been request-oriented!

But: Animal communication is not exclusively acquisitive!

Bonobo Kanzi 4 % of his utterances = indicatives or statements

Chimpanzees 4 % of their utterances = answers on questions by humans 2 % = to name or label objects and pictures 8 % = communicative intention not evident largest categories of speech acts = action requests and naming almost ¼ of chimpanzee’s communications = other kinds of sign acts

Gorilla Koko comments about state of the environment via signing

E.g., signing of LISTEN QUIET when alarm clock stopped ringing next door

2.2 Concepts

Conceptual abilities of non-human animals

Wildborn squirrel monkeys Claim: Squirrel monkeys have "natural concepts" and are capable of

using working memory with conceptual information remembrance of conceptual information for at least 16 seconds in order to

make a conceptual choice

Laboratory pigeons (Herrnstein, Loveland & Cable 1976) Reliable and discriminate responses to exemplars of water (pictures of

puddles, streams, lakes, etc.), trees, people, leaves, and fish → even when new pictures were presented

Wild Diana monkeys (Zuberbühler, Cheney & Seyfarth 1999) Referential abilities: Females react with their eagle alarm call not only

on eagle shrieks but also on males’ eagle alarm calls

Obligatory abilities in order to understand a concept:

a) Understanding that different referents are instantiations of one and the same entity.

b) Understanding that such instantiations include referents that are outside the here and now of a given situation.

c) Use of learned entity in new contexts.

d) Reconstruction of the presence of a conceptual entity.

e) Production of novel instances of instances of that entity.

f) Relating of different conceptual entities to one another on the basis of size, shape, color, etc.

Extension

Animals are able to “over-generalize”, that is, to extend the use of a form-meaning pairing to referents beyond the ones canonically associated with that unit.

→ conceptual reasoning

Orangutan Chantek Use of the sign LYN not only for his caregiver Lyn Miles but for all

caregivers Use of the sign DIRTY to refer to bad things, until BAD was learned

Lowland gorilla Koko Extension of the sign STRAW, learned initially with reference to drinking

straws, to plastic tubing, cigarettes, and a car radio antenna Extension of the sign NUT, learned initially as a name for packaged

nuts, to roasted soybeans, sunflower seeds, and pictures of nuts Bottle-nosed dolphins

Generalization of the signal HOOP, taught initially as a name for a particular, large, octagonal floating plastic hoop, to hoops of different sizes, shapes, etc., as well as to sinking instead of floating hoops

Extension of the sign WATER, taught initially to refer to a thin stream flowing from an ordinary garden hose, to a waterfall when WATER was used in a sentence for the first time at that new location

Same vs. Different

There is conceptual knowledge at least in some animals!

Squirrel monkeys: Association of triangularity with choosing same and heptagonality with

choosing different Dolphins and sea lions:

Response to novel combinations of attribute + object labels as well as to novel combinations of actions + object labels (Pepperberg 1992)

Pepperberg’s Grey parrot Alex

Comparison of objects with one another on the basis of relational concepts of 'same' and 'different'

Discrimination between objects on the basis of color, shape, and material E.g., when asked: “What color is (item designated by shape-X and

material-Y)?” → distinctions on known as well as on novel objects Distinction between relative differences in objects’ size:

Transfer of size relationships to objects not involved in training Transfer of his knowledge to items of novel colors, shapes, and sizes Indication of situation of items not differing in size

2.3 “Lexicon“

Which types of form-meaning pairings can animals distinguish?

E.g., artificial languages used to train bottle-nosed dolphins: objects, actions, and properties

Contra: human-chimpanzee interaction (Rivas 2005; Gardner & Gardner 1978) Acquisition of a large range of ASL unit types Presentations of only the following classes of signs: objects, actions,

request markers (GIMME, HURRY), deictic sign THAT/THERE/YOU, chimpanzee's own name sign

Numbers

Can animals represent numerosity?

a) Can they identify a property of the stimulus that is defined by the number of distinguishable elements it contains?

b) Can they count?c) Can they use numerical representations recursively?

a) Can animals identify a property of the stimulus that is defined by the number of distinguishable elements it contains?

Discrimination of stimuli differing in number: See Brannon & Terrace (1998): e.g., pigeons, parrots, rats,

dolphins, monkeys, and chimpanzees See Koehler (1943; 1950), Pepperberg (1987a), Boysen & Berntson

(1989): Ravens and jackdaws succeeded on numerical match-to-sample tests

on quantities up to 8 Chimpanzee Sheba: demonstration of ordinality and labelling of the sum

of two arrays separated in time and space Grey parrot Alex: correct reply to question ‘How many?’, production of

vocal numerical labels for sets of 2 to 6 objects, abilities in handling numerical quantities

E.g., when presented two pieces of cork or five pieces of wood → responses: two cork and five wood

b) Can animals count?c) Can animals use numerical representations recursively?

Neither do non-human animals show a concept of counting, nor do they appear to have the capacity to create open-ended generative systems.

No natural ability to discriminate numerosity Utilization as a "last resort", if other bases for discrimination, such as

shape, color, size, frequency, or duration of a stimulus, are eliminated Rhesus monkeys (Brannon & Terrace 1998)

Spontaneous representation of the numbers of novel visual stimuli Extrapolation of an ordinal rule to novel numerosities

Grey parrot Alex: skills in handling numbers No capability of counting or of a recursive understanding of numbers

2.4 Functional items

Location

Chimpanzees Learned red and dish, then understood command 'Insert the apple (in)

red dish' Gorilla Koko

Signs for prepositions on, out, and up Grey parrots

Concepts of in versus on to get an item that is in another object, one type of manipulation must be

used to get an item that is on another object, manipulation is different

Bottle-nosed dolphin Phoenix Ability to link an action term ('fetch‘) with a transport object, a destination

object, and spatial terms, being asked to carry a frisbee through, over, or under a hoop

Deixis

Washoe Distinction of personal deixis:

sign for 'me' = by tapping one's own chest sign for 'you' = by pointing away from the chest toward the addressee "wild card sign" = frequently used pointing sign THAT/THERE/YOU

Gorilla Koko Signs for 'me' and 'you'

Orangutan Chantek Distinction of 'I' and 'you'

Chimpanzee Sarah Spatial deixis

comprehension of difference between ‘Sarah take this’ and ‘Sarah take that’ production of ‘Give Sarah this’ vs. ‘Give Sarah that’ production of demonstratives pronominally and attributively → ‘Give Sarah

this cookie’ vs. ‘Give Sarah that cookie’

Negation

Do animals have, or can they be trained to distinguish negative concepts such as

(a) rejection,

(b) non-existence, and

(c) denial?

(a) Rejection

→ Most animal species that have been appropriately trained know to handle the notion of rejection.(Pepperberg 1999b)

(b) Non-existence

Washoe and others: Comments upon the absence of a familiar object at a customary location

Other chimpanzees: Correct responses to questions about objects not present for sensory

reference Grey parrot Alex:

Reaction to an object’s absence: nuh to refuse an object offered instead of the requested

Limited use of the concept of non-occurrence or absence

(c) Denial

Difficulties in understanding this concept: Chimpanzee Sarah

E.g., "Red on green ?" (= 'Is red on green?') referring to the relationship of two colored cards

Alteration of relationship on 30 % of the occasions to make it possible for her to answer 'Yes' rather than 'No'

Questions

Chimpanzees Concept of polar (yes-no) and WH-questions

Gorilla Koko Creation of a sign for polar questions by use of gestural intonation

Grey parrot Alex Comprehension of vocal questions Extraction of relevant categories from word questions Ability to produce questions by use of what

Bottle-nosed dolphin Ake Polar interrogative form: sign for an object + question sign Productive response to signal presence vs. absence of an object

2.5 Compositionality

Combination of form-meaning pairings in trained non-human primates:→ Chimpanzee Washoe after 10 months of training→ Chimpanzee Moja at the age of 6 months→ Gorilla Koko after 4 months of sign language training

Questions:Can animals combine form-meaning pairings with each pairing retaining its meaning constant?Do they understand that utterances can be broken up into concepts and can be combined productively and in a principled way?Are they able to use at least two paradigms of linguistic forms productively in a sequence?

Alex Recombination of beginnings and ends of existent labels

E.g., utterances such as "banacker" (banana-cracker) Kanzi, the bonobo

Perception of Tickle ball as consisting of two distinct units rather than of one unanalyzed entity

suggested by his ability to re-combine these units Bottle-nosed dolphins

Interpretation of PIPE TAIL-TOUCH as a command to perform an action on an object

that is, interpretation as an expression consisting of two discrete entities Wild Diana monkeys

Combinatory rule suggestive of a concatenation of form-meaning pairings and of a grammatical function:

Sequences of two calls are not productive since there are no other form-meaning pairings to which they could be applied.

2.6 Argument structure

Are animals able to form sentences that can be said to be homologs or analogs of what we find in human language?

Do they have the ability to acquire an argument structure?

Chimpanzee Sarah Distinction between case functions ("subject" vs. "object") Comprehension of ‘name of’ when used as part of an ACC phrase

Note: previously, ‘name of’ always being confined to NOM phrase Transfer of quantifiers from NOM phrase to ACC phrase

E.g., production of sentences such as 'Some cracker is round,' 'All cracker is PL square,' etc., followed by correct performance when instructed 'Sarah take some cracker,' etc.

Grey parrot Alex Use of structures [wanna go + location unit] and [want/wanna +

object unit] with a range of form-meaning categories Distinction of

volitional propositions (want X, wanna go X) and commands (e.g., go X, you tickle me)

2.7 Linear arrangement

Are animals capable to develop a way of consistently and productively ordering paradigms of form-meaning pairings?

In other words, do animals have something corresponding to word order in human language?

Regular patternings Chimpanzees Ally and Koko

preference for order “DEM – N" in 92 % of two-sign constructions preference for order “SUBJ – V – OBJ" in 89% of three-sign constructions preference for order “ADJ – N” in 75 % of attributive phrases in two-sign

utterances Linear arrangement in bottle-nosed dolphins

Inference of thematic object roles (transport vs. designation) from syntactic position

Ability to distinguish between PIPE FETCH HOOP 'Fetch the pipe to the hoop' and HOOP FETCH PIPE 'Fetch the hoop to the pipe‘

Iconic ordering patterns E.g., orders like tickle-bite and chase-hide

Ordering distinctions Orangutan Chantek

object-GIVE: when object referred to was present GIVE-object: when object referred to was absent

2.8 Coordination

NO subordination, BUT patterns of coordinating concatenation!

Chimpanzee Sarah Acquisition of ability to conjoin nouns

Combination of two to three nouns having the same syntactic function in the same sentence: objects of one and the same verb

E.g., "Mary give Sarah apple banana orange."

Bottle-nosed dolphin Phoenix Instruction to act on a sequence of two propositions each consisting of

an object and an action, e.g., Instruction: PIPE TAIL-TOUCH PIPE OVER Response: swimming to the pipe, touching it with her tail flukes, and jumping

over it

2.9 Taxonomic concepts

Do animals have, or can they acquire relational categories, in the sense that they perceive and/or describe one concept in terms of another concept?

Tomasello & Call (1997) Primates → strong evidence in favor of taxonomic concepts:

A number of animals, including avian species, are able to both perceive and produce predications on the basis of sameness and differences between objects

Premack (1976) Chimpanzees distinguish between first and second order relations:

Observation e.g. that the relation between ‘red’ and ‘red’ is same, as that between ‘grey’ and ‘grey’ is same, and that the relation between ‘red’ and ‘red’ is the same as that between ‘grey’ and ‘grey’

the latter being a relation between relations (→ second order relation)

(1) Hierarchical taxonomic relations

a) Inclusion: A is a kind/type of B (e.g., An apple tree is a kind/type of tree).

b) Property relationship: B has property A(a red ball)

c) Partonomy (or meronymy): A is a part of B(A finger is part of a hand)

d) Social relationship: A is a relative of B(Anne’s father, husband, etc.)

e) Possession: A has B(Anne’s car, name, etc.)

f) Location: B is located at A(the book on the table)

(1a) Inclusion

Common domain: modifying compounding no clear instances of it in non-human animals, nor of productive

compounding in general Interpretation of reported combinations of form-meaningful pairings:

unitary, non-compositional meanings combinations of free forms Chimpanzee Washoe

described a swan by signing WATER BIRD Savage-Rumbaugh et al. (1980)

Chimpanzees interpret symbols (lexigrams for specific foods or tools) in order to then label them with lexigrams for the hypernyms ‘food’ or ‘tool’

Chimpanzees have ability to treat ‘food’ and ‘tool’ as representational labels, and to expand the use of these labels to novel exemplars

Reason: training encouraging the appearance of functional symbolic communication between chimpanzees

(1b) Property relationship

Gorilla Koko Acquisition of distinct signs for 16 modifiers, including 'big', 'clean', 'cold', etc.

Trained African Grey parrots Classification of objects on the basis of physical properties

color (blue, green, grey, etc.), shape (2-corner, 3-corner, 4-corner, etc.), and material (chain, hide, key, etc.)

Extension of the word rock as a label to the property 'hard' Chimpanzee Sarah

Sentences of the target form "Sarah take red dish" Question markers as in “Red ? apple” and “Yellow ? banana”

Orangutan Chantek Use of attributes, as in red bird and white cheese food eat

Sea lions & bottle-nosed dolphins Modifiers for color (BLACK, WHITE, GREY), size (LARGE, SMALL), locations

(WATER, LAND), and locative modifiers LEFT, RIGHT, BOTTOM, and SURFACE

(1c) Partonomy

Claim: Apes are capable to understand the nature of part-whole relationship.

Partonomy concept in chimpanzee Sarah Ability to match pieces and names of fruit to intact fruit Comprehension of “name of" when used as part of an “ACC” phrase

Partonomy concept in chimpanzees Peony & Elizabeth ability to sort

plant parts (leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers) into a plant class animal parts (fur, teeth, hair, and bones) into an animal class

Partonomy concept in spider monkeys (Tomasello & Call 1997) categorization of fruit trees in their environment on the basis of the

particular type of fruit they bore

(1d) Social relationship

Observation: A wide variety of non-human primates have access to rich knowledge of who is related to whom, as well as who is dominant and who is subordinate.

In fact, primate understanding of relational categories is said to have evolved first in the social domain to comprehend third-party social relationships.

Kinship relationship in non-primate species:

Captive bat mothers (Dechmann 2005) Recognition of pups, although pups do not recognize their mothers

Chimpanzees (Hare et al. 2000) Understanding of subordinate-dominant relations Ability to play different roles

Different primate species (Tomasello & Call 1994; Tomasello 2000a) Understanding of third-party social relationships Understanding and forming of categories of third party social

relationships Redirected aggression:

A1 (or A's kin) is attacked by B, A retaliates by attacking B's kin

(1e) Possession

Fitch, Hauser & Chomsky (in press): animal “ownership” is influenced by dominance, priority of access,

value of resource, and species-specific rules and exceptions “ownership” concept in some animals with overlap with our own

No indication of a taxonomic relation possessor-possessee in any of the animals that have been studied!→ e.g., Gorilla Koko: production of combinations such as KOKO PURSE or HAT MINE

(1f) Location

Bottle-nosed dolphins Ake and Phoenix Understanding of some kind of locative modifier-object construction

(Note: certainly not sufficient evidence) Relational sentence: transport word or destination word + modifier

E.g., PERSON LEFT FRISBEE FETCH (for Ake) and FRISBEE FETCH BOTTOM HOOP (for Phoenix)

Arrangement patterns of the form [O1 + O2 + R] Use of LEFT and RIGHT as locative modifiers (M) before object term,

hence [M + O] O1 and O2 = object terms R = relational action term Exposure (without any training) to expanded structures [M + O1 + O2 + R]

and [O1 + M + O2 + R]

Conclusion

Taxonomic relations are a requirement for there to be noun modification and also for noun phrase recursion.

The animals concerned are said to both comprehend and produce conglomerations of features and

assign them to objects ‘red’ and ‘banana’ in the case of the chimpanzee Sarah rose and paper in the case of the Grey parrot Alex

have abstract concepts such as ‘red-ness’ or ‘banana-ness’

3. Language-like abilities in animals

(2) Language-like abilities of some trained non-human animals

a) to understand salient characteristics of conceptsb) to distinguish form-meaning pairings ("words")c) to acquire form-meaning pairings of more than one hundred items,

including items denoting objects, actions, and some numbersd) to handle functional items for negation and interrogatione) to have an elementary understanding of the notion of deixisf) to use an elementary argument structureg) to acquire some understanding of linear arrangement of form-

meaning pairingsh) to conjoin propositions and/or form-meaning pairingsi) to acquire some basics of taxonomic hierarchy as it manifests itself

in inclusion and part-whole relations

4. Conclusion

The mechanisms underlying human speech perception were largely in place before language evolved.

Several of the core properties of human syntax lie within the grasp of other animals.

Structural features of human languages concern primarily apes’ cognitive abilities rather than their communicative abilities. The two are not entirely mutually incompatible since there is clearly an

overlap area: These abilities correspond at least to one layer of human language evolution