Can you speak in rhinoceros?
At the end of the
LiveScience article on the starling controversy, a
perverse piece of reasoning is attributed to Chomsky:
"[...] if someone
could show that other animals had the basic property of human language,
it would be of very little interest to the biology of language, but
would be a puzzle for general biology," Chomsky said.
"It's expected that if a species has some ability that has real
selectional advantage, it will use it."
The premises seem fair, but Chomsky's conclusions are
topsy-turvy.
Suppose someone has shown us "that other animals had
the basic property of human language." In fact, let's suppose we
actually have Gerald, a truly great ape
who I just reported on. Gerald has some ability that allows him to
manifest behaviorally "the basic property of human language": indeed, he's commandingly erudite. It seems
clear (though this is only implicated by the above quote, not asserted)
that Chomsky thinks the relevant ability would have "real selectional
advantage," and that we should therefore expect that the ability is
used in the wild. So now, what should we infer?
a. Chomsky's addled conclusion: Gerald would show that standard
biological theory is wrong, since sometimes complex abilities evolve
without leading to performance of any action that would confer
selectional advantage.
b. The correct conclusion: Whatever innate cognitive capabilities Gerald has
which enable him to process human language, gorillas must use
these capabilities to perform tasks in the wild, tasks which confer
selectional advantage. Having observed gorillas in the wild, we take it
that those tasks are non-linguistic.
If I show you Gerald, you'll choose (b) every time, right? I mean, duh?
Is the headline going to run:
Gorillas supersmart: have been hiding
it?
So Gerald's impressive language abilities would
comprise part of the general intelligence that, if in the wild, he
would use for dealing with nuts, bananas, and his mother. There would
be no paradox for general biology, except to the extent that we would
wonder about the conditions needing to obtain before cultural evolution
of language might take place. And yes, of course the result would be
of interest to the biology of language! Imagine you're the editor
of the journal Language, and a paper reporting that an ape can converse
freely in English and Greek comes in the door. The ape is apparently a
co-author. Even though you believe every claim made in the paper, you
reject it with the comment "Dear Professor Fielding and colleagues,
unfortunately we cannot accept your submission to our journal, as the
results are of no interest for linguistics." I think not.
Chomsky and his acolytes have long claimed that the ability to process
language does not comprise part of the general cognitive abilities of a
problem solving animal, but is an entirely disjoint ability dependent
on special purpose neural structures. Some of the evidence for this
position, e.g. evidence of localization of language processing centers in the brain, is quite compelling. But the hypothetical Gerald would blow all that evidence
out of the water.
This week we learned that Starlings have an ability that might loosely be
described as linguistic, though you shouldn't expect one to be
interviewed on the Tonight Show anytime soon. Here, I must admit I have
some sympathy for Chomsky's position. We now know a little more about
bird brains, but not much more about human language. Where I disagree with him is in the general principle he invokes, which seems to imply that even animals producing and comprehending grammatically correct English would be of no consequence for linguistics. Such a conclusion would be ludicrous.
By the way, many of you will recognize my title, taken from the song "Talk to the Animals" by Leslie Bricusse. And the immortal answer: "Of courserous, can't you?"
Posted by David Beaver at April 29, 2006 08:50 PM