The First Word

Language is built in two levels of construction. At the first level, sounds from the set comprising the language – its phonemes – are combined into meaningful sounds known as morphemes.  There are for example about 44 phonemes in English (depending on the dialect), which are combined to make parts of words and words themselves, such as “micro” and “wave.” Morphemes are found in birdsong, in the songs of whales, and in other animal vocalizations. The morphemes in these songs recur repeatedly, but perhaps surprisingly, no animal vocalization, not even birdsong, has the range of sounds that humans possess.

At the next level, morphemes are combined into phrases that are usually intended to convey meaning. Linguists call this syntax – the rules for combining words in a recognizably correct manner. As Chomsky noted, we can produce syntax separately from meaning, as when one constructs the grammatically correct but meaningless, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

Until recently, it was believed that only humans could make use of the structural rules of syntax, but different types of syntax have been observed in the communication of a number of primate species, including chimpanzees and gibbons. Gibbons arrange sounds into structured vocalizations that are quite different from those of most other primates in order to produce complex songs, used to communicate up to one kilometer in distance. What is important about these gibbon utterances is that the same set of sounds has two different meanings to a gibbon when ordered in two different ways. The simple structural rules used by these primates in the wild contradict the idea that creating meaning with a defined structure – for example, subject, verb, object – is a special human ability.

To better understand the potential that animals have for language comprehension, efforts have been underway for several decades to teach human communication to animals in captivity, with startling results. Numerous chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have acquired a facility with American sign language to a degree that allows them to converse at the level of a young child. (Kenneally states their achievements are on a par with children as old as four, which is significantly older than the consensus estimate of age two and a half years. Much cognitive development occurs in children between these ages.)

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh began teaching language to bonobos in the 1970s. She maintains that the best method is to teach them indirectly, much as young children learn language, by having them hear it all around them. Young bonobos are raised in a language-rich environment by regularly being spoken to during feeding, playing, and grooming, rather than being drilled in repetitions of a word while pointing to the sign for it on a picture board. The result, Kenneally writes, is that the bonobos can, in addition to making simple declarations, converse about intentions and states of mind.

These bonobos demonstrate creativity in their use of words. For instance, some of them spontaneously combine single words that they have already learned to create new words, such as linking “water” and “bird” to form “waterbird,” meaning a duck. Savage-Rumbaugh’s star pupil, a young male named Kanzi, could combine symbols to instruct what he wanted her to do. Savage-Rumbaugh has written that Kanzi’s immersion into a language-rich environment enabled him to acquire all of the mental components necessary for language acquisition and production.

The last common ancestor of humans and bonobos lived six million years ago. When Kanzi demonstrates the ability to produce or comprehend language at the level of a young human child, it suggests that humans and their closest relatives were bequeathed a common set of skills that enabled them to produce something like language as we know it. It makes sense to assume that our common ancestor evolved the trick of combining sounds – even in a limited way – to create meaning. Thus the foundations of language existed long before the genus Homo arrived on the scene.