Speech Training

For a long time, attempts have been made to teach monkeys to speak the language of man, but they all ended in failure. Only in 1916 William Ferniss succeeded at the price of great patience in teaching the orangutan to pronounce and correctly use the words "dad" ( English dad ) and "cup" ( cup ). Furniss noted that the monkeys, making sounds familiar to them, do not use the tongue and lips, and the words learned by the orangutan do not require precise control of the movements of the tongue and lips ^[1] .

The fact that chimpanzees are susceptible and quick to learn in all other respects contributed to an even more deep-rooted opinion that it is the language that determines the most significant differences between humans and other animals.

In the 1950s, a wide comparative study was conducted of the ability to solve various logical problems in chimpanzees named Vicky, on the one hand, and several children, on the other. Vicki demonstrated that in terms of intellectual development, she can successfully compete with her peers children. But Vicki hardly learned to confidently pronounce four words ^[2] . This failure can be explained in two ways:

• Vicki possessed more linguistic abilities than it might seem, but their appearance was hindered by the improper structure of the vocal apparatus.
• Vicki's brain did not contain the necessary structures, as it, for example, did not contain the structures responsible for mathematics: Vicki had difficulty distinguishing between five and six subjects, etc.

Although it is known ^[3] that the Pirah Indians also experience similar difficulties, because in their language ( Pirahan ) there are only two words with the meaning of the quantity: “few” and “many”, but there are no numerals, however, monkey educator Kate Haze, scientists and the public inclined to the second conclusion.

American psychologists Allen and Beatrice Gardner, watching a science film shot about Wiki ^{[2] [Comm. 1]} , drew attention to the fact that she accompanies each of her words with an expressive gesture, so that she could be understood by turning off the sound. At this time, information began to come in that for wild chimpanzees, gestures are an important means of communication. This prompted the Gardners to conclude that the study of linguistic abilities of chimpanzees is better with gestures.

In 1966, the Gardners acquired a young female chimpanzee named Washo with the aim of teaching her to speak American sign language - Amslena. Amslen was chosen because it is a well-studied language, in addition, it was possible to compare the development of chimpanzees and deaf children.

Washo showed an object or action, and then folded her fingers in an appropriate gesture, causing an associative connection in her mind. Already having learned eight characters, Washo began to combine them. Even at the beginning of training, she demonstrated an understanding of signs: she recognized the image in the picture no worse than the subject itself, distinguished a small image of an adult from an image of a child, etc. Washo actively used signs to communicate with people and achieve their goals. In three years, she learned 85 words, and five years after the start of training, she already knew 160 words ^[2] .

By 1972, a dozen chimpanzees were trained in Amslena at the Oklahoma Institute for the Study of Primates.

Experiments have shown that chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have symbolic thinking and easily use the principle of generalization, using familiar gestures in new situations. Human apes are able to use words in a figurative sense, they own metaphors. They can create new concepts by combining well-known words, for example: “toilet” - “dirty good”; “Lighter” - “bottle match”.

The main development of speech and intelligence of speaking monkeys occurs, as a rule, in the first years of life - most often monkeys reach the level of a two-three-year-old child in the development of speech. Growing up, they largely remain like children, react childishly to life situations and prefer games to all other ways of spending time. Monkeys also have a sense of humor.

A case is described when a bonobo female trained in sign language taught her cub instead of a human experimenter. In an experiment conducted by the Foundation for the Study of Large Ape Monkeys (USA), the famous male Kanzi was able to learn to understand about 3000 English words by ear and actively use more than 500 words using the keyboard with lexigrams (geometric signs) ^[6] . This allows us to talk about bonobos as the most intelligent form of primates after humans.

The position of critics greatly depends on their definition of what exactly is a human language, and this question does not have a clear answer in modern science ^[7] .

Almost from the very beginning of the experiments, the version about the ability of monkeys to language met with criticism. One of the leaders of the Nim projectHerbert Terres in 1979 published a resonant work in which he argued that monkeys arbitrarily repeat gestures recently used in the interlocutor’s speech ^{[8] [9]} . Subsequently, Terres's report was verified in detail, and his argument was repeatedly disputed in scientific discussions, including E. Bernstein and T. Kent . There is an opinion that some criticism of specific works, proclaiming the ability of monkeys to learn the language, had grounds, but it can not be extended to the entire totality of such works. Terres’s position has taken root in the public mind thanks to widespread citation in the scientific press and media coverage and has been reflected in journalistic works ^[7] . Of modern publications criticizing Terres' skepticism regarding the talking monkey phenomenon, the article by philosopher Peter Singer is considered influential ^[10] . Singer, following J. Pullum ^[11] , believes that the chimpanzee Nim did not really master the language, but that this was due not to the inability of the monkeys to learn the language, but to incorrect and insufficiently diligent training. In turn, Singer’s position was criticized by M. Seidenberg , who, while agreeing that Nim lacked personal attention, claims that the monkey received sufficient language training ^[12] .

There are allegations in the literature that Terres no longer participated in scientific discussions ^[7] , but several times he published answers to criticism ^{[13] [14]} , expressed his opinion in the press ^[15] . Today, Terres is the only specialist who has studied the linguistic abilities of anthropoid apes, who still adheres to the view that monkeys cannot master the language ^[16] .

Linguists Noam Chomsky and Stephen Pinker ^{[17] [18]} , zoopsychologists criticized the hypothesis of the linguistic abilities of monkeys in the scientific and popular literature. ^[19] , ethical biologists ^{[20] [21]} . Critics pointed out not only the monkeys' apparent inability to make sentences, but also a significantly weaker ability than people to remember words: it was noted that, according to the most optimistic statements, monkeys were able to bring their vocabulary to about a hundred words, while children For 5 years they know about 2 thousand words ^[22] . Some of the critics' objections, in turn, have been refuted by other authors. ^[7] In particular, they criticized the claim that, during the training of monkeys, they were given gestural and other clues: after Terres et al .'s key skeptical report, the researchers specifically tried to minimize the clues given to the monkeys, although there is reason to believe that the language is taught to people such clues play a significant role ^[22] .

After 1979, funding for research on the talking monkey phenomenon was reduced. But despite the skepticism about the hypothetical phenomenon, widespread among some scientists (mainly linguists - representatives of the Noam Chomsky school), research continues, giving, among other things, optimistic results ^[23] .

• Coco (gorilla)
• Washo (chimpanzee)
• Nimes Chimp
• Kanzi (bonobo)
• Talking animals
• Animal intelligence
• Sign languages ​​in animals

• Belyanin V.P. Psycholinguistics . - M., 2005.
• Zorina Z. A., Smirnova A. A. What did the “talking” monkeys talk about: Are higher animals able to operate with symbols? / Scientific. ed. D. Biol. n I.I. Poletaeva. - M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures , 2006. - 424 p.
• Linden Yu. Monkeys, man and language / Transl. from English E.P. Kryukova. - M.: Mir Publishing House , 1981.

• Autograph | “What the“ talking “monkeys told” - PostNauka