Concluding remarks on non evidence of syntactic rules in non-human communications...

Though this topic is quite interesting, can not devote more time on it. I have been given another challenge to propose some implementable algorithm on Ontology which can be integrated to the existing retrieval engine and also it should show marked improvement in results obtained. Have to start reading about it. So here goes my observations on the above mentioned topic:

Though artificial chimp signaling systems have some analogies to human language (e.g., use in communication, combinations of more basic signals), it seems unlikely that they are homologous. Chimpanzees require massive regimented teaching sequences contrived by humans to acquire quite rudimentary abilities, mostly limited to a small number of signs, strung together in repetitive, quasi-random sequences, used with the intent of requesting food or tickling. This contrasts sharply with human children, who pick up thousands of words spontaneously, combine them in structured sequences where every word has a determinate role, respect the word order of the adult language, and use sentences for a variety of purposes such as commenting on interesting objects. Though we can find some rough parallel in animals, as for instance, in perceptual abilities, it is obvious that human not only segment speech, but are also capable of continuously map the segments onto an enormous lexicon of minimally contrasting yet semantically distinct words. In all the cases of language-trained apes, they might act as if they have imbued some syntactic properties or recursive abilities, but there is no test to this hypothesis. Same is the case with CHF’s (2002) hypothesis that FLN (Faculty of Language in Narrow sense) may be unique to human. Although they have argued that most if not all of FLB (Faculty of Language in Broad sense) is shared with other species, what might be crucial is the degree of capacity. As for example, memory is essential to recursion. A computer program with a badly defined recursive procedure comes to a standstill, because it runs out of memory to store a record for the infinite number of loops. Likewise, the role of working memory aided by two subsidiary systems of phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad is important in language. Future investigations of the linguistic capacities of language-trained animals should search for such other crucial attributes of human syntax, including the use memory, attributing mental status to others, reflecting the knowledge the signaler (primates) intends its audience to acquire rather than the knowledge it has and so on.