Lexical creation by signing apes

[Celso Alvarez Caccamo]

David and all,

Well, we're going around in little circles ;-).

On Tue, 15 May 2001, David Samuels wrote:

> 1. Koko is not deaf

So? If she were deaf, she wouldn't be able to associate the phonic forms
of English "eyebrows" and "browse".

> 2. Koko is not exposed to fluent signers. Rather, she is exposed to English
> speakers who can do some signing. (I could be confusing Penny Patterson
> with other researchers. Does anyone know what the ASL fluency of the
> Gorilla Foundation people is?)

Why does competence in ASL matters? The sign the researcher used (she was
not Penny Paterson) on the video, /bringing her fist to her right
eyebrow/, and the one Koko used, /bringing both her fists to both her
eyebrows/ was the same (except in Koko's reduplication).

> So it's unclear to me how Koko is "inventing" a homonym, as that homonym
> (brows/browse) already exists in the language she hears people speaking all
> the time.

The *spoken English* homonym exists, yes. But I was referring to Koko's
supposed creation of a *new* visual sign. A sign is a form-meaning
combination, not just the gestural sign configuration (that's the sign
vehicle). If /bringing fist.../ etc. means *either* 'eyebrow' *or*
'lettuce', depending on context, those two words are homonyms: two words
are homonymous when they share form but not meaning. Koko didn't sign
/bringing fist.../ to request to be fed human eyebrows.

> But researchers in non-human primate language capabilities are always
> chalking things up to their subjects' creativity (just like
> anthropologists, I guess). Koko "creates" her own syntax (something
> Savage-Rumbaugh also says about Kanzi); Koko "jokes," says "up" sometimes
> when she means "down"; Koko uses "metaphor," referring to "cat" as
> "excrement."

My dear colleagues: From your (very helpful and interesting) replies I'm
gathering that some of you are having a hard time sticking to my specific
questions ;-) . I am not talking about Koko's (lack of) syntax abilities
-- that was evident from the documentary and from all I've read about
signing apes. I am not talking about metaphor creation. I am asking about
the likelihood of a very specific procedure for lexical creation. This
procedure does not entail meaning transfer or composition), but *form*
transfer.

> I'm more impressed with Washoe's creation of compound nouns for
> "watermelon" (sugar + water) and "duck" (water + bird) than with Koko's use
> of a sign meaning "brows" to mean "browse." Koko apparently creates
> compounds, as well. (Of course, again, we have to take the researchers'
> word for it that they are indeed compound nouns, since there's not much
> evidence that Washoe or Koko use signs in a way that non-pongid speakers
> would understand as "grammatical.")

If by "grammatical" you mean syntactic, there is very little syntax in
"sugar + water" or, for that matter, in "watermelon". Suppose I create a
powerful, energy-clean fan with an old byke wheel. I call it "awatuyragh"
in my language, but you don't know that because I've never pronounced the
word in front of you. You don't speak my language grammatically, but you
know some words, which you use telegraphically. You see the awatuyragh,
point at it and say, "Air wheel!". You consistently call it "air wheel",
or "airwheel". I must conclude that you have invented a word, even though
you lack grammar. Children do that all the time.

> I can see something in the brows/browse thing, but as an indicator of
> "creativity"? I'd be much more impressed if Koko signed "stop brow-beating
> me" to her keepers, or signed "Michael's paintings are so much more
> low-brow than mine" to the gallery people.

Me too, but that's beyond the issue. The point is whether transferring the
form of one word to create another word is a type of capability that
trained apes have (humans do have it, in writing), just as they (apes)
have the capability to join meanings in compounds.

-celso
lxalvarz at udc.es