Lexical creation by signing apes

[Celso Álvarez Cáccamo]

Barbara, thanks.

You say:

>Homophony in signing would be iconization - recreating something that's
>visual.

Perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly. I'm not referring to the iconic
relation between the sign vehicle /thumb moving across eyebrow/ and the
referent 'eyebrow', but to the isomorphic relation between the sign
configuration for 'eyebrow' and the sign configuration for 'browse,
lettuce'. That is, /thumb moving across eyebrow/ is not iconic of 'lettuce'
-- it is an arbitrary symbol, mediated by homophony in English, something
like the rebus principle in writing. Koko seemed to be "writing", as with
popular English usages of the type "4 U", short for "for you". But /thumb -
'eyebrow'/ and /thumb - 'lettuce'/ are not homographous either, as signing
is not writing. So, they are homo... what?

>There have been good critiques of the ape language research, including
>claims about Koko's signing abilities.  I don't have one of those
>references handy (as I am not in the office), but remember one by Mark
>Sidenberg (or is it Seidenberg? - he's at USC now) and Laura Pettito (at
>McGill).  I can get that reference for you if you want.

Thank you, but there is no need for it -- I'm just curious. Yes, I
understand that many of the claims about apes' language abilities are quite
exaggerated or miss the point about the role of grammar (not just lexicon)
in language. That was evident in the documentary itself ("Koko is just like
us", and expressions of that sort). But what struck me, precisely, is that
a potentially important fact as this one was not discussed.

Best,
-celso



Celso Álvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz at udc.es
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/