User:Ejohnso9/sandbox

Human-animal communication

Human-animal communication is a broad umbrella term that can refer to a number of different kinds of communication between humans and animals, at varying levels of complexity. More basic forms of this communication include training pets (dogs, cats, birds) to obey verbal commands and interacting with animals who can imitate human speech (in most cases, these imitations are purely phonological, without any abstract reasoning or creative generation of language). More complex forms of communication between humans and animals can be seen in John Lilly’s experiments with dolphins, as well as multiple famous experiments involving primates using sign language. Even some parrots have been documented as being able to move beyond just imitation of human voices.

Birds

Although much of human language “spoken” by birds can be attributed to mere imitation of sounds, Alex the African grey parrot seemed to be able to use language creatively. Though his vocabulary of about 100 words did not break any records, he exhibited other apparent cognitive advancements, showing in experiments with his trainer Irene Pepperberg that he acquired the concept of “same/different,” could label cardinal sets, and could combine the handful of nouns, adjectives, and other phrases into novel requests for several different objects. Pepperberg’s research was published in numerous scientific journals.

Another African grey, called N’kisi, reportedly possessed a vocabulary of close to 950 words. N’kisi seemed able to combine these words into novel phrases, and was even thought to possess a sense of humor expressed in occasional wordplay. Many people have expressed doubt at the experimental validity of these claims, however, since his trainer claimed he could also perform telepathy.

Even songbirds, though unable to imitate human speech in the way parrots can, have been documented as having complex “languages” and vocabularies (learn more at bird vocalization).

Dolphins

In the 1960s, John Lilly, M.D., contemporary and associate of Timothy Leary, began experiments in the Virgin Islands aiming to establish meaningful communication between humans and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Experimenter Margaret Howe Lovatt agreed to a  two-and-a-half-month long experiment, living in isolation with a dolphin named Peter.

A basic outline of Peter the dolphin's apparent linguistic progress is as follows: early lessons involved mostly noise and interruptions from Peter during English lessons. After several weeks, Peter seemed to make an effort to imitate the instructor's speech, making human-like sounds, which were recorded. More interesting was the dolphin's apparent grasp of basic semantics, such as the different aural indicators for 'ball' and 'doll' and other toys present in the aquarium. Peter was able to perform tasks such as retrieval on the (aurally) indicated object without fail. Later in the project, Peter appeared to be able to process linguistic syntax, in that he could distinguish between the commands like "Bring the ball to the doll," versus "Bring the doll to the ball." This ability appeared to demonstrate a grasp of basic grammar.

Much of this experiment has been called into question in the years since, due to unethical treatment of the dolphins and to the eventual disgrace of John Lilly as a scientist. John Lilly is not a linguist, and among many other issues, the experiment does not appear to have been conducted with any deep understanding of human linguistics and its properties.

Much later, experiments by Louis Herman, a former collaborator and student of Lilly's, appeared to show that dolphins were able to master a computer-generated language with arbitrary and complex grammar.

Primates

As part of a large-scale human-primate language study, Nim Chimpsky was raised in a human household and taught to communicate with his handlers using sign language. The hope was that, since humans and apes are such close evolutionary relatives, maybe it was merely environmental factors that separated their language abilities from ours. Nim learned many relevant signs and was able to combine them frequently into adjective-noun constructions, and even appeared to combine them in novel ways without first being shown the sequence, but video footage later revealed some of Nim’s caregivers making the same signs seconds before Nim did, revealing that much of his progress was just through imitation. Even though the experimenters had grand visions of Nim’s language abilities growing like those of a human child, his language stagnated with short two- and three-word constructions, never fully taking on the properties of human language, and the experiment ended when he attacked one of the experimenters.

Koko is a western lowland gorilla who also grew up learning sign language, but unlike Nim, was also exposed to spoken English as well. Although Koko has mastered many signs, and seemed early in her experiment to acquire language with human-child-like speed and efficiency, she has not seemed to grasp any higher-order sense of grammar or syntax, and her language abilities are limited to those equivalent to a young human child. Koko is probably best known for her appearances in videos with late comedian Robin Williams, in which language does not seem to be much of a barrier; Koko was much beloved by Williams, and her interactions with him endeared her to many.

Implications

If human-animal communication ever reaches a point of mutual understanding beyond the rudimentary, the argument for the uniqueness of human language could be called into question. By continuing to study the mechanisms that underlie human language and animal systems of communication, linguists, zoologists, and scientists of various disciplines could continue to learn how these systems evolved and where the deeper commonalities lie. However, to date there have not been any definitive studies that place any animal communication system near the complexity of human language.

Through cross-disciplinary study and cooperation, strides can also be made along these lines toward figuring out language's path through evolution. Further research on primates, as the closest living relatives of humans, in fields like Genetics and Psychology could bring new ideas about the evolution of language to the forefront, and much research is already being done on the genetics of language. Continuing to walk these paths in light of the strides already made in studying human-animal communication can only lead to more discoveries, especially if the many disciplines of genetics, linguistics, psychology, biology, etc. can cooperate and collaborate.

References

First draft:

Author’s note: I’ve cut almost half of the original article because I couldn’t see how all of it tied together. I’m honestly tempted to say that this article doesn’t need to exist at all. I’d appreciate any feedback you have on what direction to potentially take. I’m also unsure how much detail I should go into on Nim and Koko and Alex since they all have their own Wikipedia articles about them already, so whatever feedback you have would be much appreciated!

Human-animal communication is a broad umbrella term that can refer to a number of different kinds of communication between humans and animals, at varying levels of complexity.

Intro

More basic forms of this communication include training pets (dogs, cats, birds) to obey verbal commands and interacting with animals who can imitate human speech (in most cases, these imitations are purely phonological, without any abstract reasoning or creative generation of language). More complex forms of communication between humans and animals can be seen in John Lilly’s experiments with dolphins, as well as multiple famous experiments involving primates and sign language.

Birds

Although much of human language “spoken” by birds can be attributed to mere imitation of sounds, Alex the African grey parrot seemed to be able to use language creatively. (needs more elaboration)

Dolphins

John Lilly and cetacean communication

In the 1960s, John Lilly, M.D., prolific writer and explorer of consciousness via the isolation tank (his invention), contemporary and associate of Timothy Leary, began experiments in the Virgin Islands aiming to establish meaningful communication between humans and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Lilly financed, mostly personally, a human-dolphin co-habitat, a house on the ocean's shore that contained an area that was partially flooded and allowed humans and dolphins to live together in the same space, sharing meals, play, language lessons, and even sleep.

Two experiments of this sort are explained in detail in Lilly's popular books (see John Lilly for bibliography). The first experiment was more of a test run to check psychological and other strains on the human and cetacean participants, determining the extent of the need for other human contact, dry clothing, time alone, and so on. Despite tensions after several weeks, the experimenter, Margaret Howe Lovatt, agreed to a two-and-a-half-month long experiment, living in isolation with a dolphin named Peter.

A basic outline of Peter the dolphin's linguistic progress is as follows: early lessons involved mostly noise and interruptions from Peter during English lessons, and a food reward of fish was necessary for him to 'attend class.' After several weeks, Peter seemed to make a concerted effort by Peter to imitate the instructor's speech, making human-like sounds, which were recorded. More interesting was the dolphin's apparent grasp of basic semantics, such as the different aural indicators for 'ball' and 'doll' and other toys present in the aquarium. Peter was able to perform tasks such as retrieval on the (aurally) indicated object without fail. Later in the project, the dolphin appeared to be able to process linguistic syntax, in that Peter could distinguish between the commands (e.g., only) "Bring the ball to the doll," and "Bring the doll to the ball." This ability not only demonstrates the bottlenose dolphin's grasp of basic grammar, but also implies the dolphins' own language may include some such syntactical rules. The correlation between length and 'syllables' (bursts of the dolphin's sound) with the instructor's speech also went from essentially zero at the beginning of the session to almost a perfect correlation by its completion. For example, a sentence spoken by the instructor involving 35 syllables and lasting 8 seconds would be met with an 8-second burst of sound from Peter dolphin involving 35 easily discernible 'syllables' or bursts of sound.

Much of this experiment has been called into question in the years since, due to unethical treatment of the dolphins and to the eventual disgrace of John Lilly as a scientist, among other problems.

Much later, experiments by Louis Herman, a former collaborator and student of Lilly's, demonstrated the cross-modal perceptual ability of dolphins. This capacity is strong evidence for abstract and conceptual thought in the dolphin's brain, wherein an idea of the object is stored and understood not merely by its sensory properties; such abstraction may be argued to be of the same kind as complex language, mathematics, and art, and implies a potentially very great intelligence and conceptual understanding within the brains of tursiops and possibly many other cetaceans.

Primates

Nim

Koko

Implications

Evolution? Human uniqueness?

If human-animal communication ever reaches a point of mutual understanding beyond the rudimentary, the argument for the uniqueness of human language could be called into question. By continuing to study the mechanisms that underlie human language and animal systems of communication, we could continue to learn how these systems evolved and where the deeper commonalities lie. 

Sources:

http://randsco.com/_img/blog/0710/talking_with_alex.pdf

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138467156/project-nim-a-chimps-very-human-very-sad-life

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/09/arts/a-thinking-bird-or-just-another-birdbrain.html?showabstract=1

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_VN2QrM03MAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=human-animal+communication+research&ots=45HxDQSKQn&sig=_SwnmHRlYXU0h0WszyDcjeOeIYA#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2783050.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me

Biolinguistics article critique:

The main flaw of the article is that it is sorely lacking in references. While the author often links to pages about different concepts, the whole article only has a total of five citations. This is especially suspicious given that they have a whole section dedicated to "Developments" where they don't technically cite anything--one would think that recent developments being tracked chronologically would certainly require many citations.

The article is not neutral, either. We know from just a few weeks in our class that the Fibbonacci sequence hypothesis certainly isn't the only one out there; if the author was going to have a "hypothesis" section at all (which might not be the best formatting choice to begin with), they should have included multiple perspectives. They also did not go into much detail at all about Chomsky's theories, and they took the Pinker route and connected Chomsky's theory directly to his Minimalist program (which, in Pinker, was more of an accusation than a proven fact--I would have appreciated a citation there as well). Given all this, certain viewpoints are certainly overrepresented, while many others are underrepresented or not represented at all. Even the "critiques" section isn't neutral; the person only really cites one or two critiques, and they respond only to the single hypothesis they described before.

The few cited sources available online seem to work, and from what I can tell the material does not seem overtly biased. However, while I appreciate the "people in biolinguistics" section, many of the names link to pages that do not exist. A possible solution to that issue is to not include links and just list the names, or to add a citation that links to a non-wikipedia article (like their university page or something). I also have to wonder to what degree these people are "involved" that got them on the list--whether they self-identify as being involved, or what parameters the author used to decide that each person deserved to be on the list. I also wonder whether the fact that Hauser was barred from teaching at Harvard is relevant; it seems like it certainly could be, but it's mentioned in such an offhand way that it read initially like an attack on Hauser, not like a fact of the matter.

As I mentioned before, plenty is missing that could be added; the article is so short that we probably could have put something longer together after just the first two weeks of class. It is missing multiple theories and perspectives that we've talked about.