Animal Learning & Behavior,
27(1), 18-23
The dolphin's grammatical competency: Comments on Kako (1999)
- Louis M. Herman
- University of Hawaii, Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory
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- Robert K. Uyeyama
- Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory
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- (C) 1999 Psychonomic Society, Inc.
Kako (1999) reviews the evidence for syntactic competencies in
several animal species exposed to artificial language systems,
emphasizing the importance of core syntactic properties such as
argument structure and closed-class items. We present evidence
from our dolphin studies for the acquisition of the closed-class
functionality of demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, and
locatives. Sensitivity to argument structure is also evidenced
by wholly untrained and consistent interpretations of the dolphin
to probes of anomalous syntactic structures. These results are
generated within our comprehension-based paradigm, which enables
us to provide convincing objective evidence for the development
and generalization of concepts by the dolphin subject. Demonstrations
of animal language competencies may illuminate certain aspects
of human linguistic competence by suggesting that the particular
modeled subsets can derive from general cognitive mechanisms,
rather than language-specific ones.
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- Herman, L.M. and Uyeyama, R.K.(1999) The dolphin's grammatical
competency: Comments on Kako (1999). Animal Learning &
Behavior 27(1), 18-23.
-
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