Language Is Species Specific

Every species has a communication system of some sort. The system is species specific. This is unique to
that species – the system is likely to be part of the genetic makeup of members of the species. Some
communication behaviors arise in certain species even if the individual has never heard or seen adults
perform the behaviors. Some kinds of crickets and other insects have such a system. Other communication
systems, like language for humans and bird song for some species of birds, can be acquired only if the
young animal has the opportunity to experience the system in use.

No other species has a communication system like the language used by humans. There are two ways to
approach this claim, and thus meet Lenneberg’s first criterion. One is rather obvious: no other animals
talk, nor do any other animals have a gestural system with the organizational structure of human
language. The other way to address this issue is to ask whether other animals can be taught a human
communication system. You have undoubtedly heard of experiments in which researchers have
attempted to teach a form of human language to apes. That sort of experimentation is designed to test
the claim that human language is species specific: if other species could learn human language, then
human language would not be species specific. Primates do not have vocal tracts like those of humans, so
the approach has been to teach them communication that involves gestures or manipulated objects. For
example, the famous chimpanzee Washoe was taught to sign words taken from American Sign Language
(Gardner and Gardner 1969; Brown 1970). Others, like the chimpanzee Lana (Rumbaugh and Gill 1976) or
the bonobo Kanzi (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin 1994), have been trained on a variety of computer
keyboard systems. Others, like the chimpanzee Sarah, have been taught to manipulate plastic symbols
(Premack 1971, 1976). This type of research has been extended beyond primates. Parrots are excellent
mimics of the sounds in their environment, and are particularly good at imitating human speech, even
though their vocal tracts are very different from those of humans. Research in interspecies
communication has yielded a tremendous amount of information about the cognitive and social potential
of non-human species. Some apes have been able to acquire remarkably large lexicons and use them to
communicate about past events, to make simple requests, to demonstrate remarkable abilities of
perception and classification, and even to lie. Apes have also demonstrated true symbol-using behavior
(e.g., using a red plastic chip to stand for the color green) and the ability to recognize two-dimensional
pictures of objects. The grey parrot Alex learned to label many objects, colors, and shapes, and also
learned to combine sounds in ways that suggest some degree of awareness of the phonological units that
make up speech (Pepperberg 2007). Importantly, no animal has been able to learn a creative syntactic
system. For example, Washoe, the chimpanzee, learned more than a hundred individual words and could
combine them communicatively to request food or play. She did not, however, order them in consistent
ways to convey meaning, nor was there any evidence that her utterances had any kind of structural
organization (Fodor, Bever, and Garrett1974: 443). Suppose Washoe wanted her trainer (call him Joe) to
tickle her. She might sign, Joe tickle Washoe, Washoe Joe tickle, Washoe tickle Joe, Tickle Joe Washoe, or
any other combination of those three gestures. The animals that use computers have been trained to
press the keys in a particular order, otherwise they do not receive a reward. Lana, a chimpanzee trained
this way, would ask for a drink of water by pressing three keys indicating please, machine give, water. Of
course, no evidence exists that demonstrates Lana knows the meaning of any of the words associated
with the computer keys. Lana has simply learned that this pattern of behavior will result in a reward of
water, whereas other patterns will not. It is not news that smart animals can be trained to produce
complex behavioral sequences for reward. However, their use of these sequences does not signify
knowledge and use of syntax, particularly the recursive properties of syntax we discussed in Chapter 2. So
Lenneberg’s basic argument has not yet been falsified. None of these animals has acquired a system that
incorporates anything approaching the formal complexity of human language (Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch
2002). Even if people had succeeded in teaching animals a communication system incorporating syntax,
the claim that human language is biologically based would hardly have been damaged. Human language
is certainly the only naturally occurring and naturally acquired system of its type in the animal kingdom.
The fact that humans can fly under very special and artificial circumstances does not challenge the claim
that flight is biologically based in birds but not in humans.