es W3-DQ #2-Do animals have a language? us ts Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner
ID: 3471099 • Letter: E
Question
es W3-DQ #2-Do animals have a language? us ts Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner (1969). By the time Washoe was 32 years old she could use nearly 180 signs to communicate with her trainers and other chimpanzees. Although the sign-language learning sounds impressive, there are several occurrences that 365 stick out in Washoe's story. One time, she saw a swan. She looked at the researchers and, not having a sign for "swan," she simply signed water and "bird."Did Washoe make up a new sign, all on her own? Make one (1) substantial reply to a fellow classmate.Explanation / Answer
Animals do not have the ability for language because language is driven by thinking and animals only act by instinct and their immediate environmental threats. Language involves communicating one’s thoughts and feelings to another. People who lived in the forest for a long time without any human intervention didn’t develop any language capabilities. Animals use sign language because they are conditioned that way. If we look at the dogs, they do certain activities depending on the cues from the trainer. Chimpanzees did exactly the same in learning the sign language. They know few signs that the researchers taught them but we are not very sure whether they used those signs to point out the corresponding objects or they just signal something in random and the trainer thinks that it asks or says that. Parrots speak some words but they should be trained and in this case any animal could be trained to utter few words or react to any stimulus through conditioning and learning which doesn’t mean animals can think and use language on their own like human beings.
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