52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
themselves might not be able to account for fail- Washoe
ure of apes to acquire language.
Perhaps the most famous example of trying to
teach an ape language is that of Washoe. Washoe
Talking chimps: Gua and Viki was a female chimpanzee who was caught in the
The earliest attempt to teach apes language was wild when she was approximately 1 year old. She
that of Kellogg and Kellogg (1933), who raised a was then brought up as a human child, doing things
female chimpanzee named Gua along with their such as eating, toilet training, playing, and other
own son. (This type of rearing is called cross- social activities (Gardner & Gardner, 1969, 1975).
fostering or cross-nurturing.) Gua never produced In this context, she was taught American Sign
recognizable words, and appeared to understand Language (ASL, sometimes called AMESLAN).
only a few. Hayes (1951) similarly brought up a ASL is the standard sign language used by people
chimp named Viki as a human child and attempted with hearing impairment in North America. Just
to teach her to speak. This attempt was also un- like spoken language, it has words and syntax.
successful, as after 6 years the chimpanzee could At the age of 4, Washoe could produce about
produce just four poorly articulated words 85 signs, and comprehend more; a few years later
(“mama”, “papa”, “up”, and “cup”) using her lips. her vocabulary had increased to approximately
Even then, Viki could only produce these in a 150–200 signs (Fouts, Shapiro, & O’Neil, 1978).
guttural croak, and only the Hayes family could These came from many syntactic categories,
understand them easily. With a great deal of train- including nouns, verbs, adjectives, negatives and
ing she understood more words, and some combi- pronouns. It was claimed that she made over-
nations of words. generalization errors similar to those of young chil-
These early studies have a fundamental lim- dren (for example, in using the sign for “flower”
itation. The vocal tracts of chimps are physio- to stand for flower-like smells, or “hurt” to refer
logically unsuited to producing speech, and it is to a tattoo). It was further claimed that when she
likely that this was the main block to progress did not know a sign, she could create a new one.
(see Figure 3.2). Hence nothing in general can be When she first saw a duck and had not learned a
concluded about the language abilities of prim- sign for it, she coined a phrase combining two
ates from these early failures. On the other hand, signs she did have, producing “water bird”. Fur-
chimps have high manual dexterity. Later attempts thermore, she combined signs and used them cor-
were based on systems using either a type of sign rectly in strings up to five items long. Examples
language, or involving manipulation of artificially of Washoe’s signing include: “Washoe sorry”,
created symbols. “Baby down”, “Go in”, “Hug hurry”, and “Out
FIGURE 3.2
Palate
Nasal
cavity
Velum Nasal
cavity
Rear pharyngeal Palate
Lips Tongue wall Larynx
Tongue
Epiglottis Lips
Larynx
(vocal cords) Epiglottis
The adult vocal tract of a human (left) and a chimpanzee (right).
3. THE FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE 53
open please hurry”. She could answer some ques- taught language will then go on in turn to teach
tions that use what are called WH-words (so called their own offspring, or whether the offspring can
because in English most of the words that are learn it by observing their parents. This is an im-
used to start questions begin with “wh”). She was portant question, because as we shall soon see,
particularly good at understanding questions start- there is little evidence that human children are
ing with “what”, “where”, or “who”, but she had explicitly taught language by their parents. It was
problems with questions involving “how”, “when”, noted that Washoe’s adopted son Loulis both
and “why”. These latter WH-words involve some spontaneously acquired signs from Washoe and
understanding of causality (what does what to was also seen to be taught by Washoe. Although
what) and temporal-spatial sequencing (when and this is a clear indication of what is know as
where items are relative to other items), and as cultural transmission, it is unclear whether it is
we have just seen, apes have particular difficul- a language that has been transmitted, or just a
ties with these tasks (perhaps as a result of their sophisticated communication system (Fouts,
limited short-term memory). She displayed some Fouts, & van Cantford, 1989; Fouts, Hirsch, &
sensitivity to word order in that she could dis- Fouts, 1982).
tinguish between “You tickle me” and “I tickle At first sight Washoe appears to have acquired
you”. the use of words and their meanings, and at least
One interesting line of research has been the some rudimentary syntax—that is, a sensitivity to
investigation of whether chimps who have been word order in both production and comprehension.
Washoe (left) and her adopted son Loulis (right).