The Articulate Mammal (11 page)

Kanzi, a male bonobo, was born in 1980, and taken to the same research centre as Lana. By chance, Matata, an older female bonobo who had already been selected for language training, took a strong liking to him, and became his adopted ‘mother’. Kanzi became used to seeing Matata’s keyboard, which was somewhat like Lana’s. Eventually, Kanzi started to use the keyboard himself.

In the first 18 months of training, Kanzi learned around fifty symbols, and also started to combine them spontaneously, as in MATATA GROUPROOM TICKLE – apparently a request that Matata should be allowed to join in a game of tickle in the room where bonobos met together (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin 1994).

Kanzi’s language was monitored continuously, but was analysed in detail for a 5-month period when he was 5½. Over 13,000 ‘utterances’ were recorded, of which just over 10 per cent comprised two or more elements. Of these multiword sequences, 723 were spontaneous, in that they were not produced in response to a caregiver, or in imitation.

During the first month of those 5, Kanzi showed no particular symbol ordering: he produced HIDE PEANUT as often as PEANUT HIDE. But then he started to use a fairly fixed ordering of putting the action before the object, as HIDE PEANUT, BITE TOMATO, a rule apparently picked up from his trainers.

But he also invented rules. If he wanted someone to chase or tickle him, he would specify the action CHASE or TICKLE via a lexigram (keyboard symbol), then make a pointing gesture to the person he wanted to chase or tickle him.

Perhaps most impressive of all was Kanzi’s comprehension of spoken language. On one occasion, he was asked to throw his ball in the river – a
novel request – which he promptly obeyed. On another occasion he was asked to give an onion to Panbanisha, his half-sister. He looked around for an onion patch, pulled up a bunch, and handed them to Panbanisha. Overall, Kanzi’s trainers estimated that he correctly responded to 74 per cent of spoken sentences.

Kanzi is therefore a highly intelligent, sociable creature. But his ‘language’ is not significantly more advanced than that of the other primates discussed in this chapter. And like them, he used symbols primarily to obtain items he wanted, mainly food. The notion of talking for the sake of talking is largely a human attribute.

Let us now summarize our conclusions on these primates. We need to recognize, perhaps, that having language is not an ‘all or nothing’ matter. It is misleading to ‘treat language like virginity – you either have it or you don’t’ (Miles 1983: 44). All the apes we have discussed can cope with arbitrary symbols and semanticity, and display some displacement and creativity in their ‘speech’. They therefore have a grasp of some design characteristics of language which hitherto had been regarded as specifically human. However, their ability does not extend much further. The animals show little evidence of structure, they merely display a preference for placing certain symbols first or last in a sequence.

We cannot therefore agree with Lana’s trainers, who assert that ‘neither tool-using skills nor language serve qualitatively to separate man and beast any more’ (Rumbaugh 1977: 307), nor with the researcher who has claimed that ‘The Berlin Wall is down, and so is the wall that separates man from chimpanzee’ (Bates 1993: 178). Chomsky may be right, therefore, when he points out that the higher apes ‘apparently lack the capacity to develop even the rudiments of the computational structure of human language’ (Chomsky 1980: 57). Or, put more simply, ‘we have … presented evidence for the existence [in child language] of certain general cognitive processes – falling under two overall headings of intention reading and pattern-finding – that account for the acquisition process.’ (Tomasello 2003: 295). These cognitive skills seem to be either lacking or incomplete in non-humans.

Note finally that even though intelligent animals seem
capable
of coping with some of the rudimentary characteristics of human language, they do not seem
predisposed
to cope with them. As one commentator noted: ‘As with watching a circus horse walk on its hind legs, I could not escape the feeling that a species ill-adapted to symbolic communication was struggling with an unnatural task’ (Marshall 1987: 310). The situation is parallel to that found among birds. Some birds are able to learn the songs of a different species. But they find the task a difficult one. When the birds are removed from the alien species, and placed among their own kind, they learn their normal song with extreme rapidity. They seem to have an innate predisposition towards one
kind of song rather than another (Thorpe 1963). Many animals have special, biologically ordained skills:

Alligators, for example, have a special set of sensors on the skin of their faces that respond sensitively to the slightest disturbance of the surface of a body of water in which the alligator is mostly immersed. Catching (and eating) the sources of such disturbance is one of the alligator’s most useful (and characteristic) skills, and there is no serious doubt that this skill results from specific, inherited aspects of the animal’s biology. Similarly, the use of language to communicate is one of humankind’s most useful and characteristic skills, for which a comparable account is no less plausible.

(Anderson 2004: 56)

The apparent ease with which humans acquire language, compared with other apes, supports the suggestion that they are innately programmed to do so. The next chapter examines whether there is any biological evidence for this apparently unique adaptation to language.

3

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GRANDMAMA’S TEETH

Is there biological evidence for innate language capacity?

‘O grandmama, what big teeth you have!’ said Little Red Riding Hood.

‘All the better to eat you with, my dear,’ replied the wolf.

If an animal is innately programmed for some type of behaviour, then there are likely to be biological clues. It is no accident that fish have bodies which are streamlined and smooth, with fins and a powerful tail. Their bodies are structurally adapted for moving fast through the water. The same is true of whales and dolphins, even though they evolved quite separately from fish. Similarly, if you found a dead bird or mosquito, you could guess by looking at its wings that flying was its normal mode of transport.

However, we must not be over-optimistic. Biological clues are not essential. The extent to which they are found varies from animal to animal and from activity to activity. For example, it is impossible to guess from their bodies that birds make nests, and, sometimes, animals behave in a way quite contrary to what might be expected from their physical form: ghost spiders have tremendously long legs, yet they weave webs out of very short strands. To a human observer, their legs seem a great hindrance as they spin and move about the web. On the other hand, the orb spider, which has short legs, makes its web out of very long cables, and seems to put a disproportionate amount of effort into walking from one side of the web to another (Duncan 1949, quoted in Lenneberg 1967: 75). In addition, there are often inexplicable divergences
between species which do not correlate with any obvious differences in behaviour. The visible sections of the ear differ in chimps, baboons and men – but there is no discernible reason behind this. However, such unpredictability is not universal, and need not discourage us from looking for biological clues connected with speech – though we must realize that we are unlikely to find the equivalent of a large box labelled ‘language’.

Changes in the form of the body or
structural
changes are the most direct indications of innate programming. But we must also take into consideration
physiological
adaptations – changes in the bodily functions, such as rate of heartbeat and breathing. The first part of this chapter looks at parts of the human body where adaptations related to language are likely to be found. The organs used to produce and plan it are examined – the mouth, vocal cords, lungs and the brain.

The second part of the chapter is slightly different. It considers aspects of language where complex neuromuscular sequencing is involved. It becomes clear that the co-ordination required is perhaps impossible without biological adaptations.

MOUTH, LUNGS AND GREY MATTER

If we look at the organs used in speech, humans seem to be somewhere in the middle between the obvious structural adaptation of birds to flying, and the apparent lack of correlation between birds and nest-building. That is, the human brain and vocal tract have a number of slightly unusual features. By themselves, these features are not sufficient to indicate that people can talk. But if we first assume that all humans speak a language, then a number of puzzling biological facts fall into place. They can be viewed as
partial
adaptations of the body to the production of language.

For example, human teeth are unusual compared with those of other animals. They are even in height, and form an unbroken barrier. They are upright, not slanting outwards, and the top and bottom set meet. Such regularity is surprising – it is certainly not needed for
eating
. Yet evenly spaced, equal-sized teeth which touch one another are valuable for the articulation of a number of sounds, S, F, and V, for example, as well as SH (as in
shut
), TH (as in
thin
) and several others. Human lips have muscles which are considerably more developed and show more intricate interlacing than those in the lips of other primates. The mouth is relatively small, and can be opened and shut rapidly. This makes it simple to pronounce sounds such as P and B, which require a total stoppage of the airstream with the lips, followed by a sudden release of pressure as the mouth is opened. The human tongue is thick, muscular and mobile, as opposed to the long, thin tongues of monkeys. The advantage of a thick tongue is that the size of the mouth cavity can be varied allowing a range of vowels to be pronounced.

It seems, then, that humans are naturally geared to produce a number of different sounds rapidly and in a controlled manner. Their mouths possess features which either differ from or appear to be missing in the great apes. In all, one cannot help agreeing with the comment of a nineteenth-century writer:

What a curious thing speech is! The tongue is so serviceable a member (taking all sorts of shapes just as it is wanted) – the teeth, the lips, the roof of the mouth, all ready to help; and so heap up the sound of the voice into the solid bits which we call consonants, and make room for the curiously shaped breathings which we call vowels!

(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Another important difference between humans and monkeys concerns the larynx, which contains the ‘voice box’ or ‘vocal cords’. Strangely, it is simpler in structure than that of other primates. But this is an advantage. Air can move freely past and then out through the nose and mouth without being hindered by other appendages. Biologically, streamlining and simplification are often indications of specialization for a given purpose. For example, hooved animals have a reduced number of toes, and fish do not have limbs. So the streamlining of the human larynx may be a sign of adaptation to speech. But we pay a price for our specialized larynx. A monkey can seal its mouth off from its windpipe and breath while it is eating. Humans cannot do this, so food can get lodged in the windpipe, sometimes causing them to choke to death.

We now come to the lungs. Although there is no apparent peculiarity in the structure of our lungs, our breathing seems to be remarkably adapted to speech. In most animals the respiratory system is a very finely balanced mechanism. A human submerged under water for more than two minutes will possibly drown. Anyone who pants rapidly and continuously for any length of time faints and sometimes dies. Yet during speech the breathing rhythm is altered quite noticeably without apparent discomfort to the speaker. The number of breaths per minute is reduced. Breathing-in is considerably accelerated, breathing-out is slowed down. Yet people frequently talk for an hour or more with no ill-effects. A child learning to play the flute or trumpet has to be carefully instructed in breathing techniques – but no one has to instruct a 2-year-old in the breathing adaptations required for talking. It is impossible to tell which came first – speech or breathing adaptations. As the biologist Eric Lenneberg inquired (1967: 81), do donkeys say
hee-haw
on inspired and expired air so efficiently because of the way their breathing mechanisms were organized, or did the
hee-haw
come first? The answer is irrelevant. All that matters to us is that any child born in the twentieth century has a breathing mechanism apparently biologically organized for speech.

It seems, then, that there are clear indications in the mouth, larynx and lungs that we speak ‘naturally’. However, let us now consider the human brain. To what extent is this programmed for speech? The answer is unclear. Our brain is very different in appearance from that of other animals. It is heavier, with more surface folding of the
cortex
, the outer layer of ‘grey matter’ which surrounds the inner core of nerve fibres – though grey matter is actually pink in live humans, it goes grey after death. Of course, size alone is not particularly important. Elephants and whales have bigger brains than humans, but they do not talk. But elephants and whales also have bigger bodies, so some people have suggested that it is the brain–body ratio which matters. At first sight, this seems a promising approach. It appears quite reasonable to suggest that a high brain–body ratio means high intelligence, which in turn might be a prerequisite for language, especially when we find that the brain of an adult human is more than 2 per cent of his or her total weight, while that of an adult chimp is less than 1 per cent. But such ratios can be very misleading. Some animals are designed to carry around large reserves of energy which makes their bodies enormously heavy. Camels, for example, are not necessarily more stupid than horses just because they have huge humps.