Evidence of Chimp Developing "Spoken" Language

testcase writes "The New Scientist has an article describing a bonobo who appears to have developed a simple vocabulary. Researchers who have analyzed recordings of the chimp have been able to identify four sounds he makes in different contexts indicating 'banana, grapes, juice and yes.'"

Comments

Unfortunately ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

From the article:

"The linguists then came up with a definition that emphasised syntax much more than symbols," says de Waal. "Sometimes we feel it's a bit unfair that they move the goal posts as soon as we get near."

This is a real problem, which affects other areas of research as well, e.g. AI. There is a pseudo-religious, notably unscientific meme that basically says, "These are the things that make us human, so any time anyone shows us something else (an animal, a machine) that can do these things, we'll change the definition of 'these things.'" It's been abundantly obvious for some time that several species of smart animals have language, not only for communicating with humans but with each other -- e.g., different orca pods speak mutually incomprehensible dialects -- but there's such resistance to the idea that dedicated researchers have a hard time getting their results taken seriously. I can't think of any other area of science that's as vulnerable to ideology as research into the nature of intelligence.

(And no, evolutionary biology doesn't count, because the creationists are operating outside the scientific community, not within it -- however much the "intelligent design" people might like to believe otherwise.)