Last Distinction? Talking to the Animals by Benjamin Hale

CRITICISM The LasT DisTincTion? Talking to the animals By Benjamin Hale uman beings have long sought Jane Goodall witnessed chimpanzees logical observation has similarly ah definite marker between themselves modifying twigs to root for termites, eroded other distinctions humans and “the animals.” In the 1960s, tool- the naturalist Louis Leakey respond- have claimed for themselves. But making was considered such a ed, “Now we must redefine tool, rede- there remains a tradition—in litera- uniquely human behavior that when fine Man, or accept chimpanzees as ture and philosophy as much as in sci- human.” Since then, other animals— ence—of treating language as the Benjamin Hale is the author of the novel The crows, most recently—have been Rubicon that only humanity has Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve). seen making and using tools. Etho- crossed. In Paradise Lost, when Satan, Photograph of Herbert Terrace holding a puppet while Nim Chimpsky signs the word “hug” © Susan Kuklin/Photo Researchers, Inc. CRITICISM 65 (65-66,68) Hale Final8 REV2.indd_0626 65 6/26/12 10:27 AM disguised as the serpent, begins talk- tends to make language the most sat- four words: “mama,” “papa,” “cup,” ing to Eve, she says in astonishment, isfactory answer. and “up.” “What may this mean? Language of Hence our fascination with feral chil- These early experiments focused on man pronounced/ By tongue of dren—the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Kaspar language production over comprehen- brute, and human sense expressed?” Hauser, Genie, and so on—cases of sion. But ape anatomy does not readily Animals do not talk. The idea is un- human beings isolated and deprived of allow articulations of the kind necessary natural, satanic. language during the crucial early to speak. The human vocal apparatus Speculation on the origin of human acquisition period. What would it be like consists of the larynx, the throat, the language was long discouraged among to have a consciousness but be unable to nasal cavity, the tongue, and the lips— linguists; inquiry into the subject was think in articulate language? For most all of which are shaped differently in formally banned by the Société de Lin- people, to imagine the experience of nonhuman apes. Chimps’ vocal tracts guistique de Paris in 1866, and the taboo inhabiting such a consciousness is close are shorter and straighter than ours, thereby established persisted for nearly to impossible. The animal scientist with higher larynges. When humans a century. The moratorium, a famous Temple Grandin has written much on speak, moreover, we accomplish what’s incident in the history of linguistics, this subject, asserting that her autism called a velopharyngeal closure by brief- began in the earliest days of Darwin’s lends her a unique insight into the way ly blocking off air to the nasal cavity influence, after the publication of On the animals—cows, in her line of work— with the soft palate, allowing us to ar- Origin of Species but a few years before experience the world: wordlessly. “I ticulate hard consonants. Apes do not the publication of The Descent of Man, think in pictures,” she writes in the have this capability. in which Darwin first explicitly dis- opening pages of her memoir. Even as far back as the 1920s, scien- cussed human evolution—including the tists wondered about the possibilities of Words are like a second language to evolution of language. me. I translate both spoken and writ- gestural communication. “I am inclined Of modern history’s important ten words into full-color movies, com- to conclude from the various evidences,” thinkers, Darwin may be the most plete with sound, which run like a wrote Robert Yerkes, an early American chronically oversimplified. Distortions VCR tape in my head. When some- pioneer of primatology, “that the great of his thinking began not long after his body speaks to me, his words are in- apes have plenty to talk about, but no death. He treated humanity as a part of stantly translated into pictures. Lan- gift for the use of sounds to represent nature rather than over and above it, guage-based thinkers often find this individual . feelings or ideas. Perhaps upsetting Europe’s philosophical tradi- phenomenon difficult to understand, they can be taught to use their fingers, tion of the Great Chain of Being: the but in my job as an equipment designer somewhat as does the deaf and dumb hierarchical ordering of all creation, for the livestock industry, visual think- person, and thus helped to acquire a ing is a tremendous advantage. rising in increments toward man’s per- simple, nonvocal ‘sign language.’ ” Rec- fection. This model of life was so firm- It would be absurd to suggest that ognizing that nonhuman apes, though ly accepted that it survived even among because Grandin does not think physiologically unable to produce the those who accepted Darwin’s work, primarily in language she isn’t con- same range of sounds as humans, often leading to a widespread misunderstand- scious, but the importance of lan- communicate gesturally, another psy- ing illustrated by a graphic so elegant guage as a distinct marker between chologist couple, Allen and Beatrix (and so reductive) that it’s become a the human and “the animal” mind is Gardner, of the University of Nevada, pop-semiotic stand-in for the theory of still lodged in the Western Reno, began experimenting with sign evolution: the left-to-right single-file models of consciousness. language in 1966, using as their subject march of an ape morphing into a man, a female chimp named Washoe. The with its implication that evolution is a n the Thirties, the psychologists focus on sign language, which resolved teleological progression and Homo sa- WinthropI Kellogg and Luella Kellogg the main problems of the Hayes experi- piens sapiens the goal. The illustration briefly raised a chimpanzee named ment, was also influenced by Jane Goo- does less to explain evolution than to Gua alongside their own infant son, dall’s and Adriaan Kortlandt’s ethologi- reinforce the inaccurate (and specifi- Donald. They aborted the project af- cal reports that chimps in the wild have cally Western) idea of a radical break ter nine months, because Donald systems of gestural communication that between humans and other animals. seemed to be picking up more behav- are highly complex and cultural, varying Descartes, who wrote extensively iors from the chimp than vice versa. from one social group to another. on the philosophical problem of ani- In a longer and more involved experi- The Gardners housed Washoe in a mal consciousness, argued that all ment that began in 1947, another psy- trailer in their back yard and enlisted a nonhuman animals are instinctual chologist couple, Keith and Cathy small staff of graduate students to help automata, whereas humans alone Hayes, attempted to raise a newborn teach her American Sign Language. think—cogitant ergo sunt—and there- female chimp named Viki as a human Allen Gardner, a strict experimentalist, fore possess souls. The impulse to draw child. After seven years of home rear- began the study with Skinnerian con- a circle around humanity underlies the ing and intensive vocal training (in- ditioning techniques, which are unde- question “What makes us human?” cluding speech-therapy techniques niably useful in any animal training. The way we phrase the question— such as physical manipulation of the For example, they would wait for Wash- which presupposes that the answer mouth), Viki could articulate, in a oe’s “hand-babbling” to form some- must be a definite thing we possess— breathy and almost inaudible voice, thing that looked like an ASL sign, 66 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2012 (65-66,68) Hale Final8 REV2.indd_0626 66 6/26/12 10:27 AM then reward her with food or such dis- other student companions.” Being non- Prior to recent scientific advances, plays of approval as clapping, smiling, fluent, the experimenters were probably neural anatomy was a dark frontier, and and tickling. They would refine the sign poorly equipped to teach ASL to a there was no clear evidence for or with further rewarding and try to con- chimp—or anyone, for that matter. against the language-acquisition de- dition her to use it in correct contexts. They were learning signs at the same vice. All we had was Chomsky’s prom- They abandoned these methods not time Washoe was, which meant they ise that it must exist and that it must long into the experiment because were also probably poorly equipped to govern our understanding of grammar Washoe had learned only one sign: interpret them. “Often the project direc- and syntax. Rather than argue with “funny.” Roger Fouts, who worked tors themselves were uncertain about Chomsky’s anthropocentric defini- closely with Washoe her entire life, how a particular sign should be made,” tions, some researchers aimed to prove writes in his memoir, Next of Kin, that writes Arden Neisser about Washoe in that an animal could communicate in after the first year of the experiment her book on sign language and the ways that filled out Chomsky’s checklist Washoe picked up signs almost en- deaf community, The Other Side of of what makes language—principally, tirely from watching humans use them. Silence. “By the time it was taught that an animal could come to under- The methodological trickiness of the to the chimp, ‘It lost something in stand and use grammar. Proving that Gardners’ experiment plagued it and translation,’ said a deaf an animal could be “taught” to com- other sign-language experiments to friend ruefully.” municate using language—as narrowly come. ASL is a fully developed lan- conceived by Chomsky—became a guage, with movements and facial ex- he Gardners’ experiment was a holy grail for language researchers.

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