Another Post About Apes
Ok, so in the beginning of the semester I wrote a post about gorillas creating art…I learned about it in an Anthro class I’m taking. I don’t know what it is about my classes, but now in my Linguistics class, we’ve been discussing apes language-learning abilities. It’s really a very interesting subject.
So we’ve been discussing the validity of the Universal Grammar theory, whether or not language is a genetic, innate human trait, or if it is completely learned. The studies that have been done on Apes point strongly in favor of Universal Grammer. Apparently, apes have 96.4% genetic similarity to humans, and the same size brain! They are literally so closely related to us, it’s crazy.
But they can’t learn language. They can recognize words, complete tasks that are asked of them, and communicate what they want to through sign language or lexigrams. But they can’t vocalize, have no grammatical structure, have no position-specific preferences in order of words, usually don’t produce communication on their own, and never pass the language-learning abilities of a two-year old human, no matter how long they are trained. This shows that the .6 genetic difference between apes and humans must be where they lose linguistic ability. This is strong evidence that the Universal Grammar theory is true, and I find it very interesting.
