Functional items

Unlike lexical categories, such as nouns and verbs, functional categories are closed-class items expressing grammatical functions relating to person, tense, number, case, etc.

Location Do animals understand spatial relations between objects? And do they have functional concepts that correspond in some way to locative markers such as adpositions in human languages? Premack (1976: 203) found that, after learning red and dish, chimpanzees understood the command ‘Insert the apple (in) red dish’, and the gorilla Koko is said to have acquired signs for the English prepositions on, out, and up (Patterson 1978a:79). Alex and several other grey parrots were found to ‘‘understand the concepts of in versus on: They understand that to obtain a desired item that is in another object, one type of physical manipulation must be used; if the desired item is on another object, the birds’ manipulation is very different’’ (Pepperberg 1999a: 15). And the bottle-nosed dolphin Phoenix was given the task of linking the action term for ‘fetch’ with a transport object, a destination object, and spatial terms, being asked to carry a frisbee through, over, or under a hoop, and he performed correctly on 53 percent of the trials for FRISBEE FETCH THROUGH/OVER/UNDER HOOP(Herman1987,1989). This might suggest that Phoenix was able to distinguish between different relational spatial functional concepts.¹

Does that mean that these animals perceive a functional concept of space? The information that is available does not allow this question to be answered clearly in the affirmative. There is, however, a noteworthy observation made by Herman (1989: 24). In the tank of the dolphin Ake there were two fixtures: a window (WINDOW) to Ake’s right and a gate (GATE) to her left. Without being taught so, the dolphin learned to use WINDOW and GATE as relational terms for RIGHT and LEFT.

Deixis While we have found no clear evidence that animals have form meaning pairings corresponding, for example, to personal pronouns in human languages, there appears to be a concept of deixis, as has been shown especially in studies of chimpanzees who have been taught sign language: The animals studied by Gardner and Gardner (1969) display a distinction of personal deixis: The sign for ‘me’ was made by tapping one’s own chest and the sign for ‘you’ by pointing away from the chest toward the addressee. Later on, analyzing the chimpanzees studied by the Gardners and Fouts, Rivas (2005) found that the animals had what he calls a ‘‘wild card sign’’, a frequently used pointing sign THAT/THERE/YOU having the appearance of a ‘‘polysemous’’ item in that it can be glossed as ‘that’ when pointing to an object, ‘there’ when pointing to a location, and ‘you’ when pointing to a person. But the gorilla Koko is claimed to have acquired signs for ‘me’ and ‘you’ (Patterson 1978a: 79), and the orangutan Chantek is said to have distinguished ‘I’ and ‘you’ but preferred to use a proper name rather than a pronoun when talking to a person (Miles 1990: 516).

An interesting case of spatial deixis is provided by the chimpanzee Sarah (Premack 1976: 320–1). One process concerns autonomous (e.g. nominal) participants (an orange) whose use is said to be extended to that of modifiers/attributes of other participants (an orange dress). Sarah appears to have extended the use of a pronominal demonstrative to attributive demonstrative without any training; her training was restricted to the pronominal distinction between ‘this’ and ‘that’. She was asked to comprehend the difference between ‘Sarah take this’ and ‘Sarah take that’, or to produce ‘Give Sarah this’ vs. ‘Give Sarah that’. Furthermore, she was asked to produce demonstratives not only pronominally but also attributively. When required to produce ‘Give Sarah this cookie’ vs. ‘Give Sarah that cookie’, she made only three errors in fifteen trials, with none on the first five trials.

Possible manifestations of a concept of deixis can also be seen in other traits of behavior, for example in the fact that in her signed utterances the female chimpanzee Washoe placed the addressee always before the addresser or speaker in her spontaneous constructions (McNeill 1974). Note further that the bonobo Kanzi was able to label differentially the contrast of deictic motion between ‘come’ and ‘go’ (Greenfield and Savage-Rumbaugh 1990; Kako 1999: 6); but there are no clues to suggest that he was aware of the deictic significance of these items.

Negation A question that has found some attention in animal studies concerns negation: Do animals have, or can they be trained to distinguish negative concepts such as (a) rejection, (b) non-existence, and (c) denial? Jackendoff (2002: 241) maintains that no animal call system includes a signal of generalized negation like no. On the other hand, the chimpanzee Washoe and the gorilla Koko are said to have acquired a sign for negation (Patterson 1978a: 79, 90), and Premack’s chimpanzees have also been successfully taught to comprehend the concept of negation (Premack 1971, 1976: 156–60). However, among the five chimpanzees studied by Rivas (2005) on the basis of videotaped material, only one (Moja) had a sign NO, produced by shaking her head sideways, although it was not entirely clear whether this really was a negation marker.

That there is a concept of (a) seems to be well established: Most animal species that have been appropriately trained know how to handle the notion of rejection (Pepperberg 1999b: 80). And much the same applies to (b). Nonexistence is a fairly advanced concept in cognitive and linguistic development: It presupposes knowledge about the expected presence of objects, events, and other phenomena, as well as the ability to recognize a discrepancy between the expected and the actual state of affairs. However, trained apes have apparently no problems understanding this concept. The chimpanzees of Gardner and Gardner (1978) used ASL to comment upon the absence of a familiar object at a customary location, and the chimpanzees studied by Savage-Rumbaugh (1984) responded correctly when asked questions about objects when the object of the question was not present for sensory reference. Similar observations have been made in some non-primate species. Trained marine mammals have in fact demonstrated some understanding of non-existence: The bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) Ake was taught an interrogative form and to press a paddle to her right to indicate presence (‘yes’) of the named object or a paddle to her left to indicate absence (‘no’), and she could handle the distinction productively (Herman and Forestell 1985), and the sea lion Rocky ‘‘balked’’ (did not respond) when asked to perform an action (e.g. a flipper touch) on an absent object.

The parrot Alex reacted to an object’s absence by saying nuh to refuse an object offered in place of one he had requested (Pepperberg 1987c: 43–4, 1999b: 80, 83). After having been properly trained and tested, Alex showed at least limited use of the concept of non-occurrence or absence, and Pepperberg (1999b: 94) found that this use is directly comparable to that of other animals that have undergone similar training. Pepperberg warns, however, that such data provide little direct evidence for a general concept of non-existence, even if they indicate an awareness that something was not present.

We have found no conclusive evidence that animals comprehend (c). That non-human animals have difficulties understanding this concept might be suggested by the following example. When the chimpanzee Sarah was given a sentence such as ‘‘Red on green?’’ (= ‘Is red on green?’), referring to the relationship of two-colored cards, on 30 percent of the occasions she altered the relationship to make it possible for her to answer ‘Yes’ rather than ‘No’ (Premack and Premack 1983: 116).

In concluding, mention should be made of a noteworthy finding made by Zuberbühler (2002) on wild Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus Diana) in the Ivory Coast. Male Campbell monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli) have distinct alarm calls for leopards and for crowned-hawk eagles (A), and when hearing these calls, Diana monkeys respond with their own corresponding alarm calls. In addition, Campbell monkeys have a third call, consisting of a pair of low, resounding ‘‘boom’’ calls, B. This third call is used for disturbances that are not a direct threat, such as a falling tree, or a distant predator. Once Diana monkeys hear the sequence A-B of Campbell males, they ignore the alarm meaning B—that is, A-B does not trigger alarm calls in Diana monkeys. This situation might be taken as suggesting that a call A functions somehow like a negation marker for another call B; without further information, however, it is hard to tell how this behavior is to be understood.

In sum, trained animals are able to develop notions of rejection and refusal, and even of non-existence; but it seems that none of these non-human animals clearly has acquired a notion of denial, that is, the ability to deny the truth or falsity of a given assertion.

Questions What surfaces from the literature seems to indicate in fact that trained animals can acquire the ability to perceive questions. Premack’s chimpanzees have been shown to handle the concept of a polar (yes–no) question in predications on same–different distinctions, as well as a WH question when given two options and asked ‘What is A to A?’ (Premack 1976: 147–55). Similarly, the chimpanzees Washoe and Sarah had acquired a well-established interrogative marker, hence Sarah had no problems understanding word questions like ‘‘Red? apple’’ (What is the relation between red and apple?) (Premack 1971: 813). And the gorilla Koko appears to have created a sign for polar questions by using gestural intonation, retaining the hands in the sign position at the end of an utterance and seeking direct eye contact, although she did not acquire signs for word questions (‘who?’, ‘what?’, or ‘where?’; Patterson 1978a: 78–80).

But an understanding of questions was not only found in primates. The grey parrot Alex did not only comprehend a vocal question and extract the relevant category from a word question but appears to have been able to produce questions: He used what to request information about objects in his environment, and since what never occurred in his responses to questions posed by his trainers (Pepperberg 1999b: 61; Kako 1999: 10), this might suggest that he had a concept of an interrogative marker. And much the same applies to the bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) Ake, who was taught a polar interrogative form consisting of a sign for an object plus a question sign and responded productively to this form to signal presence vs. absence of an object (Herman 1989: 23).

¹ Kako (1999: 10) proposes a different answer: ‘‘Does this mean that Phoenix has some knowledge of closed-class elements and their syntactic properties? I believe that the answer is no, as relational sentences with OVER/UNDER/THROUGH are really conjoined sentences in disguise. They were first taught as ACTION terms and are even glossed by Herman with the word GO preceding them (e.g. [go] UNDER). The upshot of this is that Phoenix appears to have interpreted FRISBEE FETCH UNDER HOOP as ‘‘Fetch the frisbee and go under the hoop.’’ Her enactment indicates that these words continue to function like open-class words in human language.’’

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

مكتب السيد السيستاني يصدر بيانًا بشأن استمرار العدوان العسكري على إيران

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يصدر كتابًا نقديًّا يبحث المرتكزات المعرفية لفكر طه حسين

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يقيم ندوة عن مفهوم الحرية في المنظور الإسلامي

قسم شؤون المعارف يستقبل وفدًا أكاديميًّا لتعزيز التعاون العلمي المشترك

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

نصائح علمية لتقوية دماغك وتقليل التدهور العقلي

هرمون الذكورة يفاقم عدوى خطيرة تهدد حياة الرجال

سبب رئيسي للإصابة بسرطان القولون

بعد سن الأربعين.. هل أنت من الفئات المعرضة لخطر الغلوكوما؟

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

حرق الأمونيا.. كيف يساعد محطات الكهرباء في اليابان على إزالة الكربون؟

الشمس تقذف نتوءا عملاقا باتجاه قطبها الشمالي

كيف يخدع النعناع جسمك ليشعر بالبرودة؟.. صور عالية الدقة تكشف السر لأول مرة

ما الدور الذي يلعبه الـ AI في "حروب أميركا"؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Construction Grammar

Case study I: the let alone construction

Typology of idiomatic expressions

Exploring idiomatic expressions

Constructions versus words and rules

Argument structure

Compositionality

Motivating a construction grammar

Aspect and the count/mass distinction

Perfective and imperfective PROCESSES

Situation types

Situation aspect