Talk:Great ape language

message: The Great ape article (which redirects to Hominidae) tells us that humans are Great Apes. Therefore, this list should include a link to Human. --Dnavarro (talk) 17:58, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: "Great apes that demonstrate communication"

message: I'm trying to achieve some neutrality in the opening paragraph, specifically the sentences stating:
"Research into great ape language has shown that apes can communicate in a primitive way. Gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught sign language and can communicate with tokens and lexigrams (keyboards with symbols on them)."
The above is biased because it strongly assumes that great apes positively are communicating, although elsewhere in the article it is admitted that notable scientists dispute that this is the case.  The facts can be conveyed without the POV, if we state what is known... that the apes have learned these behaviors, and research suggests that they are using these behaviors to communicate.  This leaves it open to both sides. The Hokkaido Crow 01:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Language of opening paragraph

message: * Confusion between natural communiction and modeling of human language in animals
* opening sentence with "lots of"
* entire article largely redundant with animal language, which is another article which also needs significant workSantaduck 22:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you  look at other species pages, you will see that animals are generally referred to as "it". Jack (talk) 04:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems

message: Do we need a Wikiproject or shall we do this just informally? Martinp 17:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think doing it informally for now would be good. There really aren't enough contributors or articles to warrant a WikiProject as of yet. - FrancisTyers 18:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coordination approach 

message: Given that "human modes of communication" include everything from meaningful vocalization, sophisticated syntax, alphabetic writing systems, and internet chat, isn't the lead sentence here a little much? It seems to set an optimistic POV tone from the very start. Marskell 16:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "capable of using human modes of communication" 

message: It says in the article that "non-human primates lack vocal cords."
This is not entirely accurate. A careful Google search will reveal that great apes actually do have vocal cords, but they are located a bit higher, and this is why they can't control them very well.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.123.37.95 (talk) 20:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  vocal cords 

message: anyone got a source for the bit in the criticism section on native ASL speakers having problems with Washoe's use of sign language?  It's just, the way it's written now makes it sound like a large part of the ASL speaker's problems had to do with Washoe's *articulation* of the signs, quite apart from the also-mentioned issues with the larger syntactic structure of the utterance. Thing is, chimpanzee hand morphology differs in significant ways from humans', and I'm wondering if that could have had any effect on Washoe's sign-formation, and if so if this effect was accounted for.
--68.104.215.19 (talk) 21:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: On the "ASL" experiments, there was a real phenomenon that people who actually "speak" real ASL and use it on a daily basis with other people were consistently much more critical of the abilities of the apes to reasonably approximate ASL than observers who don't actually use ASL themselves were. AnonMoos (talk) 22:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hand Morphology and ASL 

message: Just wanted to note in case someone can check this out - much of the section deals with apes never asking questions, it seems, however, to contradict article on Kanzi, in which there is a referenced claim that "Savage-Rumbaugh did not realize Kanzi could sign until he signed "You, Gorilla, Question" to anthropologist Dawn Prince-Hughes, who had previously worked closely with gorillas". Seems this section is from article on 2006 book (which has much wider scope) and supposing additional references are where the authors of the book got it from, they are from 1980s and predate this claim, even supposing it is anecdotal and Kanzi's researchers have no scientific proof of this, it still is possible that stuff has happened over last 20+ years 46.109.170.121 (talk) 03:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limitations might be outdated 

message: All the communications system chosen for ape-human communications experiments lack the duality of patterning basic to human spoken languages and the multiple simultaneous componentiality common to human sign languages, which right away calls into question the word "language" in "Great ape language".  The communications of apes also lack any rules of syntax in the human sense -- some of them can eventually kind of pragmatically learn to associate that the name of the doer of an action comes before the name of the action and that the name thing or person affected by an action comes after the name of the action (i.e. subject-verb-object for concrete observable items and actions, each referred to with a single sign or symbol only), but that's about it.  There are none of the hierarchical constituents and recursion seen in human language.  Extended ape utterances are word salad, in which the item that they want, the action that they want done to it, and the name of the person they want to do said action are jumbled together repetitiously but without any particular structure.  Apes also don't really learn to take turns in a conversation, and the great majority of their spontaneous communication attempts are because they want something... AnonMoos (talk) 22:45, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing criticisms 

message: Seems like earlier this year the article was somewhat rewritten to cast more doubt on earlier foundational research. I'm not sure that was merited. Anyone have thoughts? Andre🚐 23:53, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current state of research and recent rewrite