Discourse and gibbons

[David Samuels]

The cognitive capabilities of non-human primates are very sophisticated.
Whether that equals "language" or "discourse," I don't know. I think the
experiment that Ronald Kephart mentioned earlier is key. Or key to me,
because I'm convinced that non-human primates have certain latent
capabilities that in homo sapien evolution are developed out of all
proportion.

In brief, the experiment is this: a chimpanzee is shown two dishes of
treats, one of which contains a smaller amount of treats than the other.
The dish the chimp points to or reaches for is given to another chimp.
When the chimps are  were unable to point to the dish containing less,
even though the dish pointed to would go to another chimp. When
presented with dishes containing cards with Arabic numberals written on
them, however, the chimps could always point to the smaller number and
get the larger amount for themselves. It's almost like clockwork: when
shown the objects, the chimps inevitably reach for the larger amount -
almost as if it's out of their control. When shown the numbers, the
chimps point to the smaller number. (I don't know what the error
percentage is.) To me this says more about the cognitive capabilities of
non-human primates - and about the consequences of interposing mediating
symbols between the world and the representation of the world - than a
whole truckload of work with sign language and computer lexigrams.

Unfortunately, I can't recall the name of the researcher. But it is
included in a PBS Nova episode, called "Can Chimpanzees Talk?" that
includes both some very interesting and very problematic work.

On the "discourse" side of things, I'll just throw in that it seems to
me that primates in the wild do a pretty good job of following the
Gricean conversational maxims....