baboons’ ability seems language-like

[Kerim Friedman]

An interesting language-related tidbit from a NY Times article about
experiments on Baboon social behavior:

http://tinyurl.com/2k9a4k

"In some of their playback experiments, Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth
have tested baboons' knowledge of where everyone stands in the
hierarchy. In a typical interaction, a dominant baboon gives a threat
grunt, and its inferior screams. From their library of recorded baboon
sounds, the researchers can fabricate a sequence in which an inferior
baboon's threat grunt is followed by a superior's scream.

Baboons pay little attention when a normal interaction is played to
them but show surprise when they hear the fabricated sequence implying
their social world has been turned upside down.

This simple reaction says a lot about what is going in the baboon's
mind. That the animal can construe "A dominates B," and distinguish it
from "B dominates A," means it must be able to break a stream of
sounds down into separate elements, recognize the meaning of each, and
combine the meanings into a sentence-like thought.

"That's what we do when we parse a sentence," Dr. Seyfarth said. Human
language seems unique because no other species is capable of anything
like speech. But when it comes to perceiving and deconstructing
sounds, as opposed to making them, baboons' ability seems much more
language-like."

- kerim