Lexical creation by signing apes

[David Samuels]

Celso,

You wrote:

If the facts were like the researchers narrate them, Koko obviously
generalized from sound to visual sign to designate another referent, which
is quite an achievement. That's the principle of orthographic writing.

I'm not sure about this, and not sure how you would determine it
experimentally. If I'm not mistaken, Koko hears the lexeme /brauz/ a lot.
So perhaps there is simply a relationship between spoken and gestural sign
on the one hand, and between spoken sign and referent on the other. It
could simply mean that Koko associates the sound /brauz/ with a certain
signed gesture, the meaning of which is either the thing above your eyes,
or a certain kind of food. How often is Koko made aware of the plural noun
"brow + s" vs. the collective noun "browse" as a minimal pair? How often
does Koko talk about her "brows" as oposed to asking for lettuce? As with
many of these chimp and gorilla things, it may in fact be the
*researcher's* knowledge of homophony that triggers the interpretation that
the ape is being creative.

It's not a perfect analogy, but of course I have plenty of students who
conflate the usage of "their," there," and "they're." Or "its" and "it's."
Are they (thei?) being creative? Or are they confusing a homonym with its
(it's) graphic realizations? (I think these kinds of confusions are very
important for understanding, e.g., the social history of language change,
but I'm not sure that's the same as thinking of it as creating entirely
lexemes, or new sign-referent relations.)

D

P.S. None of which means that apes aren't creative.

* *  *   *     *        *             *                     *
David Samuels
Postdoctoral Fellow
Penn Humanities Forum
3619 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 746-5948
davidsam at sas.upenn.edu