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Encyclopedia > Animal language

Animal language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, most researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as human language.


Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from animal communication even at its most complex, and that the underlying principles are not related. Digimon, the only known animals. ...


Others argue that an evolutionary continuum exists between the communication methods these animals use and human language.


The following properties of human language have been argued to separate it from animal communication:

  • Arbitrariness: There is no rational relationship between a sound or sign and its meaning. (There is nothing "housy" about a house.)
  • Cultural transmission: Language is passed from one language user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
  • Discreteness: Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.
  • Displacement: Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally.
  • Duality: Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
  • Metalinguistics: Ability to discuss language itself.
  • Productivity: A finite number of units can be used to create an infinite number of utterances.

Research with apes, like that of Francine Patterson with Koko, suggested that apes are capable of using language that meets some of these requirements. However, now the validity of said research is widely disputed and, for some, discredited.[citation needed] Research into non-human Great Ape language has generated a great deal of evidence suggesting that apes are capable of using sophisticated communication with humans and other apes. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Koko (born July 4, 1971, in San Francisco, California) is the name of a captive, acculturated gorilla trained by Dr. Francine Penny Patterson and other scientists at Stanford University to allegedly communicate with more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and understand approximately 2,000 words of...


In the wild chimpanzees have been seen "talking" to each other, when warning about approaching danger. For example, if one chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes a low, rumbling noise, signalling for all the other chimps to climb into nearby trees. Type species Simia troglodytes Blumenbach, 1775 distribution of Species Pan troglodytes Pan paniscus Chimpanzee, often shortened to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. ...


Arbitrariness has been noted in meerkat calls; bee dances show elements of spatial displacement; and cultural transmission has occurred with the offspring of many of the great apes who have been taught sign languages, the celebrated Bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, being examples. Binomial name Suricata suricatta (Schreber, 1776) Meerkat range The meerkat or suricate is a small mammal and a member of the mongoose family. ... Honey bees learn and communicate in order to find food sources and for other means. ... Sign language interpreter on stage A sign language (also signed language) is a language which uses manual communication instead of sound to convey meaning - simultaneously combining handshapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express fluidly a speakers thoughts. ... Binomial name Pan paniscus Schwarz, 1929 Bonobo distribution The Bonobo (Pan paniscus), until recently usually called the Pygmy Chimpanzee and less often the Dwarf or Gracile Chimpanzee, is one of the two species comprising the chimpanzee genus, Pan. ... Kanzi (born October 23, 1980), a bonobo, is one of the most most famous and accomplished linguistic apes, in research led by E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. ... Panzee and Panbanisha are two apes with whom research is being carried out in the United States. ...


However, these single features alone do not qualify such instances of communication as being true language.

Contents

Non-Primates: Studied examples

The most studied examples of animal languages are:

  • Bee dance - used to communicate direction of food source in many species of bees
  • Bird songs - songbirds can be very articulate. African Grey Parrots are famous for their ability to mimic human language, and at least one specimen, Alex, appears able to answer a number of simple questions about objects he is presented with. Alex is suspected to understand the meaning of dozens of words, and may even possess the capacity for spontaneous original communication using simple English syntax.[citation needed]
  • Parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds- display vocal learning patterns. Eric Jarvis is tracing the vocal learning pathways in these birds' brains to help researchers working to restore speech in human stroke victims.
  • Whale songs - Two groups of whales, the Humpback Whale and the subspecies of Blue Whale found in the Indian Ocean, are known to produce the repetitious sounds at varying frequencies known as whale song. Male Humpback Whales perform these vocalizations only during the mating season, and so it is surmised the purpose of songs is to aid sexual selection. Humpbacks also make a sound called the feeding call. This is a long sound (5 to 10 s duration) of near constant frequency. Humpbacks generally feed cooperatively by gathering in groups, swimming underneath shoals of fish and all lunging up vertically through the fish and out of the water together. Prior to these lunges, whales make their feeding call. The exact purpose of the call is not known, but research suggests that fish do know what it means. When the sound was played back to them, a group of herring responded to the sound by moving away from the call, even though no whale was present.
  • Prairie dog language: Dr. Slobodchikoff studied prairie dog communication and made the following discoveries. His current findings are that prairie dogs have:
    • different alarm calls for different species of predators;
    • different escape behaviors for different species of predators;
    • transmission of semantic information, in that playbacks of alarm calls in the absence of predators lead to escape behaviors that are appropriate to the kind of predator who elicited the alarm calls;
    • alarm calls containing descriptive information about the general size, color, and speed of travel of the predator. Northern Arizona University Research
  • Caribbean Reef Squid have been shown to communicate using a variety of color, shape, and texture changes. Squid are capable of rapid changes in skin color and pattern through nervous control of chromatophores.[1] In addition to camoflauge and appearing larger in the face of a threat, squids use color, patterns, and flashing to communicate with one another in various courtship rituals. Caribbean Reef Squid can send one message via color patterns to a squid on their right, while they send another message to a squid on their left.[2][3]
  1. ^ Cloney RA. & Florey E. Ultrastructure of cephalopod chromatophore organs. Z Zellforsch Mikrosk Anat. 1968; 89:250-280. PMID 5700268
  2. ^ The Cephalopod Page: Sepioteuthis sepioidea, Caribbean Reef squid
  3. ^ Byrne, R.A., U. Griebel, J.B. Wood & J.A. Mather 2003. Squids say it with skin: a graphic model for skin displays in Caribbean Reef Squid.PDF (3.86 MiB) Berliner Geowissenschaftliche Abhandlungen 3: 29-35.

Honey bees learn and communicate in order to find food sources and for other means. ... Bird songs are certain vocal sounds that birds make—in non-technical use, those sounds that are melodious to the human ear. ... This article has now been sucessfully imported to Wikibooks. ... Alex is an African grey parrot whose use of language has been studied intensively for over 30 years by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and currently at Brandeis University. ... For the runtime engine for Perl 6, see Parrot virtual machine. ... For the Australian jangle pop band, see The Hummingbirds. ... A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Oscines of Passeriformes (ca. ... Humpback whales are well known for their songs Whale song is the sound made by whales to communicate. ... The Reef squid, Sepioteuthis sepioidea (Blainville, 1823), or Caribbean Reef squid, are members of the 10 arm cephalopods (decabrachia) with torpedo-shaped bodies (with the hood-like part above the head called the mantle which contains the stomach, gills, ink sac, pen, reproductive organs, and digestive organs), two large complex... Zebrafish chromatophores mediate background adaptation on exposure to dark (top) and light environments (bottom). ... Portable Document Format (PDF), sometimes mistaken for Printable Document Format, is an open file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 and is now being prepared for submission as an ISO standard[1]. It is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout... A mebibyte (a contraction of mega binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated MiB. 1 MiB = 220 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes = 1,024 kibibytes The mebibyte is closely related to the megabyte (MB), which can either be a synonym for mebibyte, or refer to 106...

Comparison of the term with "animal communication"

It is worth distinguishing "animal language" from "animal communication", no matter how complex that latter may be. In general the term "animal language" is reserved for the modeling of human language in animal systems, although there is some comparative interchange in certain cases (e.g. Cheney & Seyfarth's vervet monkey call studies). Thus "animal language" typically does not include bee dancing, bird song, whale song, dolphin signature whistles, prairie dogs, nor the communicative systems found in most social mammals. Also the features of language as listed above are a dated formulation by Hockett in 1960, one of the first attempts ever to break down features of human language for the purpose of being able to apply Darwinian gradualism, and although an influence on early animal language efforts (see below), is today not considered the key architecture at the core of "animal language" research. Species Chlorocebus sabaceus Chlorocebus aethiops Chlorocebus djamdjamensis Chlorocebus tantalus Chlorocebus pygerythrus Chlorocebus cynosuros The vervet monkeys or green monkeys are primates from the family of Old World monkeys. ...


Also, Animal Language results are controversial for several reasons. (For a related controversy, see also Clever Hans.) In the 70's John Lilly was attempting to "break the code" to speak full-out with wild populations of dolphins so we could speak to them, and share our cultures, histories, and more. This effort failed. The very early chimpanzee work was with chimpanzee infants raised as if they were human, a test of the nature vs. nurture hypothesis. Of course, they had a different laryngeal structure, as well as no voluntary control of their breathing, so this didn't work well, leading subsequent researchers to move toward a gestural (sign language) modality, as well as "keyboard" devices laden with buttons adorned with symbols (known as lexigrams) that the animals could push to produce artificial language, or observe humans pushing to comprehend it. These later keyboard and gestural chimpanzee researchers are perhaps the best known in animal language, and their animals are also known on a first-name basis: Sarah, Lana, Kanzi, Koko, Sherman, Austin, Chantek. Perhaps the best known critic of "Animal Language" is Herbert Terrace. Clever Hans performs Clever Hans (in German, der Kluge Hans) was a horse that was apparently trained to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. ... John Lilly John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001) was an American physician, psychoanalyst and writer. ... Type species Simia troglodytes Blumenbach, 1775 distribution of Species Pan troglodytes Pan paniscus Chimpanzee, often shortened to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. ... A lexigram is a symbol that represents a word but is not necessarily indicative of the word by itself. ...


Terrace's 1979 criticism using his own research with the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky was scathing and basically spelled the end of animal language research in that era, most of which emphasized the production of language by animals. In short, he accused researchers of over-interpreting their results, especially as it is rarely parsimonious to ascribe true intentional "language production" when other simpler explanations for the behaviors (gestural hand signs) could be put forth. Also, his animals failed to show generalization of the concept of reference between the modalities of comprehension and production; this generalization is one of many fundamental ones that are trivial for human language use. The simpler explanation according to Terrace was that the animals had learned a sophisticated series of context-based behavioral strategies to obtain either primary (food) or social reinforcement, behaviors that could be over-interpreted as language use. Nim Chimpsky (1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition (code named 6. ... Look up parsimony in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In operant conditioning, reinforcement is any change in an organisms surroundings that: occurs regularly when the organism behaves in a given way (that is, is contingent on a specific response), is contiguous with the behaviour (associated in time and space), and is associated with an increase in the probability...


In 1984 during this anti-Animal Language backlash, Louis Herman published an account of artificial language in the bottlenosed dolphin in the human journal Cognition. A major difference between Herman's work and previous research was his emphasis on a method of studying language comprehension only (rather than language comprehension and production by the animal(s)), which enabled rigorous controls and statistical tests, largely due to the fact that he was limiting his researchers to evaluating the animals' physical behaviors (in response to sentences) with blinded observers, rather than attempting to interpret possible language utterances or productions. The dolphins' names here were Akeakamai and Phoenix. Irene Pepperberg used the vocal modality for language production and comprehension in an African Grey Parrot named Alex in the verbal mode, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh continues to study Bonobos such as Kanzi and Panabanisha. R. Schusterman duplicated many of the dolphin results in his California Sea Lions ("Rocky"), and came from a more behaviorist tradition than Herman's cognitive approach. Schusterman's emphasis is on the importance on a learning structure known as "equivalence classes." Louis Herman is a researcher in of dolphin sensory abilities, dolphin cognition, and humpback whales. ... Akeakamai was a female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, who along with a companion female dolphin named Phoenix, were the subjects Louis Hermans animal language studies at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. ... Irene Pepperberg (born April 1, 1949, Brooklyn, New York) is a scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. ... This article has now been sucessfully imported to Wikibooks. ... Alex is an African grey parrot whose use of language has been studied intensively for over 30 years by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and currently at Brandeis University. ... Kanzi (born October 23, 1980), a bonobo, is one of the most most famous and accomplished linguistic apes, in research led by E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. ... In mathematics, given a set X and an equivalence relation ~ on X, the equivalence class of an element a in X is the subset of all elements in X which are equivalent to a: [a] = { x ∈ X | x ~ a } The notion of equivalence classes is useful for constructing sets out...


However, overall, there has not been any meaningful dialog between the linguistics and animal language spheres, despite capturing the public's imagination in the popular press. Also, the growing field of language evolution is another source of future interchange between these disciplines. Most primate researchers tend to show a bias toward a shared pre-linguistic ability between humans and chimpanzees, dating back to a common ancestor, while dolphin and parrot researchers stress the general cognitive principles underlying these abilities. More recent related controversies regarding animal abilities include the closely linked areas of Theory of mind, Imitation (e.g. Nehaniv & Dautenhahn, 2002), Animal Culture (e.g. Rendell & Whitehead, 2001), and Language Evolution (e.g. Christiansen & Kirby, 2003). To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...


See also

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Animal communication is any behaviour on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. ... Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science, which investigates sound production and reception in animals, including man, the biological acoustically-borne information transfer and its propagation in elastic media. ... Animal training is a method to teach animals to perform specific acts in response to conditions or stimuli. ... Research into non-human Great Ape language has generated a great deal of evidence suggesting that apes are capable of using sophisticated communication with humans and other apes. ... Operant conditioning is the modification of behavior brought about over time by the consequences of said behavior. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... Talking birds are birds who can imitate human speech. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Yerkish is a language developed for use by primates at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. ...

Researchers

Louis Herman is a researcher in of dolphin sensory abilities, dolphin cognition, and humpback whales. ... Roger Fouts (born June 8, 1943) is an American primate researcher. ... Deborah Fouts is Director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI). ... Dr. Mary Lee Jensvold is the Assistant Director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI). ... John Lilly John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001) was an American physician, psychoanalyst and writer. ... Irene Pepperberg (born April 1, 1949, Brooklyn, New York) is a scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. ... David Premack is currently emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. ... Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is most famous for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their use of language using lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. ...

Animals

Akeakamai was a female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, who along with a companion female dolphin named Phoenix, were the subjects Louis Hermans animal language studies at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. ... Alex is an African grey parrot whose use of language has been studied intensively for over 30 years by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and currently at Brandeis University. ... Clever Hans performs Clever Hans (in German, der Kluge Hans) was a horse that was apparently trained to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. ... Binomial name Cercopithecus nictitans (Linnaeus, 1766) The Greater Spot-nosed Monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans) is one of the smallest Old World monkeys. ... Kanzi (born October 23, 1980), a bonobo, is one of the most most famous and accomplished linguistic apes, in research led by E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. ... Nim Chimpsky (1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition (code named 6. ... Nkisi is a young African grey parrot renowned for his impressive English usage skills and other abilities. ... Panzee and Panbanisha are two apes with whom research is being carried out in the United States. ... Washoe Washoe is a chimpanzee, currently living at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. ... For the runtime engine for Perl 6, see Parrot virtual machine. ... For the Australian jangle pop band, see The Hummingbirds. ... A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Oscines of Passeriformes (ca. ...

Links

Literature

Selected References from Primate, Parrot, Marine Mammal animal language programs, as well as the Linguistics literature:

  • Bickerton, D. (2005). Language evolution: a brief guide for linguists. link
  • Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Reprint. Berlin and New York (1985).
  • Chomsky, N. (1959). A Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language, 35, 26-58.
  • Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
  • Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Chomsky, N. & Lasnik, H. (1993). The theory of principles and parameters, in: J. Jacobs A. von Stechow, W. Sternefeld, and T. Vennemann (eds.) Syntax: an international handbook of contemporary research. Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Christiansen, M.H. & Kirby, S.H. (Eds.)(2003). Language Evolution: The States of the Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Deacon, T. W. (1997) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Human Brain. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press.
  • Fitch, W.T., & Hauser, M.D. (2004). Computational constraints on syntactic processing in a nonhuman primate. Science, 303, 377-380.
  • Fouts, R. S. (1973). Acquisition and testing of gestural signs in four young chimpanzees. Science, 180, 978-80.
  • Gardner, R.A., & Gardner, B.T. (1969). Teaching sign language to a chimpanzee. Science, 165, 664-672.
  • Gardner, B.T., & Gardner, R.A. (1975). Evidence for sentence constituents in the early utterances of child and chimpanzee. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 244-267.
  • Gardner R. Allen and Gardner Beatrice T. (1980) Comparative psychology and language acquisition. In Thomas A. Sebok and Jean-Umiker-Sebok (eds.): Speaking of Apes: A Critical Anthology of Two-Way Communication with Man. New York: Plenum Press, pp.287-329.
  • Gisiner, R., & Schusterman, R. J. (1992). Sequence, syntax, and semantics: Responses of a language-trained sea lion (Zalophus californianus) to novel sign combinations. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 106, 78.
  • Gomez, R.L, & Gerken, L. (2000). Infant artificial language learning and language acquisition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 178-186.
  • Goodall, J. (1964). Tool Using and Aimed Throwing in a Community of Free-Living Chimpanzees, Nature, 201, 1264-1266.
  • Hauser, M.D., Chomsky, N. & Fitch, W.T. (2002). The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science, 298, 1569-1579.
  • Hayes, C. (1951). The Ape in Our House. New York: Harper & Row.
  • Herman, L. M. & Forestell, P. H. (1985). Reporting presence or absence of named objects by a language-trained dolphin. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 9, 667-691.
  • Herman, L. M. Kuczaj, S. A. & Holder, M. D. (1993). Responses to anomalous gestural sequences by a language-trained dolphin: Evidence for processing of semantic relations and syntactic information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 122 (2):184-194.
  • Herman, L. M., Richards, D. G. & Wolz, J. P. (1984). Comprehension of sentences by bottlenosed dolphins. Cognition, 16, 129-219.
  • Hockett, C. (1960).The origin of speech. Scientific American, 203, 88-96.
  • Holder, M. D., Herman, L. M. & Kuczaj, S. III (1993). A bottlenosed dolphin's responses to anomalous gestural sequences expressed within an artificial gestural language. In H. R. Roitblat, L. M. Herman & P.E. Nachtigall (Eds): Language and Communication: Comparative Perspectives, 299-308. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Hurford J.R., Studdert-Kennedy, M., & Knight, C. (Eds.) (1998) Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kako, E. (1999). Elements of syntax in the systems of three language-trained animals. Animal Learning & Behavior, 27, 1-14.
  • Kellogg, W.N., & Kellogg, L.A. (1933). The ape and the child. New York: Whittlesey House (McGraw-Hill).
  • Knight, C., Studdert-Kennedy, M., Hurford, J.R. (Eds.) (2000). The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kohts. N. (1935). Infant ape and human child. Museum Darwinianum, Moscow.
  • Ladygina-Kohts, N.N, & de Waal, F.B.M. (2002). Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child: A Classic 1935 Comparative Study of Ape Emotions and Intelligence (Tr: B. Vekker). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Lenneberg, E.H. (1971) Of language, knowledge, apes, and brains. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1, 1-29.
  • Miles, H.L. (1990) "The cognitive foundations for reference in a signing orangutan" in S.T. Parker and K.R. Gibson (eds.) "Language" and intelligence in monkeys and apes: Comparative Developmental Perspectives. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • Nehaniv C. & Dautenhahn, K.(Eds.) (2002). Imitation in Animals and Artifacts. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
  • Patterson, F., and Linden, E. (1981) The Education of Koko. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
  • Pepperberg, I.M. (1999). The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative abilities of Grey Parrots. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Pinker, S. (1984). Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reprinted in 1996 with additional commentary.
  • Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: how the mind creates language. New York: William Morrow & Co.
  • Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.
  • Plooij, F.X. (1978). "Some basic traits of language in wild chimpanzees?" in A. Lock (ed.) Action, Gesture and Symbol. New York: Academic Press.
  • Premack, D. (1971). Language in a chimpanzee? Science, 172, 808-822.
  • Rendell, L. & Whitehead, H. (2001) Culture in whales and dolphins. Beharioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 309-382.
  • Roitblat, H.R., Herman, L.M. & Nachtigall, P.E. (Eds.)(1993). Language and Communication: Comparative Perspectives, 299-308. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Rumbaugh Duane M. (1980) Language behavior of apes. In Thomas A. Sebok and Jean-Umiker-Sebok(eds.): Speaking of Apes: A Critical Anthology of Two- Way Communication with Man. New York: Plenum Press, pp.231-259.
  • Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. (1990). Language Acquisition in a Nonhuman Species: Implications for the innateness debate. Developmental Psychobiology, 23, 599-620.
  • Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S., McDonald, K., Sevcik, R.A., Hopkins, W.D. & Rupert E, (1986). Spontaneous symbol acquisition and communicative use by pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus). Journal of Experimental Psychology:General, 115, 211-235.
  • Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. and Fields, W. M. (2000). Linguistic, cultural and cognitive capacities of bonobos (Pan paniscus). Culture and Psychology, 6, 131-154.
  • Sayigh, L.S., Tyack, P.L., Wells, R.S. & Scott, M.D. (1990). Signature whistles of free-ranging bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): stability and mother-offspring comparisons. Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology,247-260.
  • Schusterman, R. J. & Gisiner, R. (1988). Artificial language comprehension in dolphins and sea lions: The essential cognitive skills. The Psychological Record, 34, 3-23.
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  • Schusterman, R. J. and Kastak, D. (1993) A California Sea-Lion (Zalaphos californianus) is capable of forming equivalence relations. The Psychological Record, 43, 823-839
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  • Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • Terrace, H. S. (1979). Nim. New York: Knopf.
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Language, communication among human beings that is characterized by the use of arbitrary spoken or written symbols with agreed-upon meanings.
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