Talk:Washoe (chimpanzee)

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More than half of this article is arguments or cases against the reasearch done on Washoe. It has little to do with the actual Chimpanzee, and is not a good, unbiased wikipedia article. (preceding unsigned comment by User:63.100.44.98)

Washoe's main notability is due to the research done with her, so I doubt this can be separated. don't think the article is far from NPOV, though it could certainly do with more editing than I have just done. Martinp 04:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Death

Sadly, she died just recently. [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.197.40.199 (talk) 19:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Language acquistion - dubious claims

"She was the first non-human to acquire a human language (American Sign Language)..."

Extremely misleading statement. She in no way acquired human language: she could use a small number of symbols (relative to a child who by this stage has probably around 14000 words) and most scientists agree that Washoe demonstrates at best very impoverished grammar. I have thus changed the sentence to:

She was the first non-human who demonstrated a modest ability to learn symbols (American Sign Language) and use them to communicate. Whilst some hailed this as the first instance of a non-human acquiring a human language, this conclusion is not scientifically robust. Neuropsychology 12:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, this claim is very misleading and the whole article completely glosses over the vast opposition to the project's published "findings".

The project may be a valid study of the ape's communication capabilities, but to describe the stimulated/conditioned use of of a limited umber symbols with no human grammar bears no resemblance to what linguists regard as human language (as yet the only mode of language we have discovered). Unless someone can demonstrate grammar, abstraction and infinite innovation, then the best we have is a performing chimp. Please get a linguist to review this page.

http://www.uwm.edu/~wash/MIRROR2.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.163.30 (talk) 09:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remember that ASL doesn't use the same grammar as spoken English. Alx xlA 17:32, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So where is the evidence that Washoe has mastered any sort of grammar at all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.163.30 (talk) 11:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see the claim that Washoe learnt ASL and passed it on to her son has been re-introduced. What the available evidence shows is that she acquired a small vocabulary, which without human intervention she was in part able to pass on to her son (Fouts, Fouts, & Van Cantfort, 1989). There is disputed evidence that she was using a combinatorial vocabulary for the generation of new ideas (water-bird for duck for example). The reason for this is that this is open to experimenter bias, deliberate or not. For example, "bread foot" could well have been said and not recorded because it is not meaningful to the experimenter. So that's vocab. We can agree on a modest vocab and a less sizeable one being passed onto Loulis. I have amended the article.

As for grammar, I agree with the above comment about needing to show evidence of recursion etc. However, I do not consider myself significantly familiar with the material to comment on this. So, I have emailed some linguists and invited them to make comments on the page. Neuropsychology 00:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple articles on great ape language

This article is one of at least 16 articles on Wikipedia primarily about the fascinating but controversial subject of Great ape language. These articles have been created independently and contain much interesting but uncoordinated information, varying levels of NPOV, and differences in categorization, stubbing, and references. Those of us working on them should explore better coordinating our efforts so as to share the best we have created and avoid unnecessary duplication. I have somewhat arbitrarily put the list of 16 articles on Talk:Great ape language and would encourage us to informally coordinate efforts there. Martinp 18:01, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifications

Note that someone inserted the following HTML comment into the article:

"Potential and limitation of other species' use of human languages is likely to come from an integration of the results of all these projects, rather than an essentially historical pursuit of what did or did not happen in Project Washoe.{{unclear}}{{Fact}}"

Also, the article states:

"Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker believes that the argument that Washoe is the first non-human to acquire a human language is generally considered without scientific support (see Pinker, 1994)."

"Generally considered" by whom? Does this mean Pinker himself believes there's "generally" no scientific basis for the claim or is he merely reporting a "general" lack of support of the claim among scientists? - dcljr (talk) 18:54, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]