Taxonomic concepts

We have seen that non-human primates and a range of other animals exhibit a range of abilities in perceiving and producing structures that have at least analogs in human languages. In the present section we are concerned with linguistic features that have been claimed to distinguish human beings from their non-human cousins: Doanimals have, or can they acquire relational categories, in the sense that they perceive and/ or describe one concept in terms of another concept? Tomasello and Call (1997: 134) maintain that at least in primates there is some fairly strong evidence that this is the case. As we saw above, a number of animals, including avian species, are able to both perceive and produce predications on the basis of the sameness and differences between objects.

Premack (1976: 354) suggests that his chimpanzees distinguish between what he calls first and second order relations: They are not only able to observe, for example, that the relation between ‘red’ and ‘red’ is same, as that between ‘grey’ and ‘grey’ is same, but also that the relation between ‘red’ and ‘red’ is the same as that between ‘grey’ and ‘grey’, the latter being a relation between relations, that is, a second order relation. But are animals also able to understand asymmetrical relations of dominance among concepts, where one concept presupposes, implies, or includes the other concept? More specifically, is there anything in animals that corresponds to hierarchical taxonomy or to head-dependent relations in human languages? The following discussion will be confined to relations as they manifest themselves between thing-like, referential concepts, that is, form–meaning pairings typically coded as nouns in human languages. To this end, we need to introduce a number of elementary taxonomic distinctions. We will use the term ‘‘taxonomy’’ in a general sense for conceptual structures describing relations among concepts in a principled way. Taxonomies may be ‘‘shallow’’, that is, not involving hyponymy, or hierarchical, that is based on some form of dominance or hyponymy, and our interest here is exclusively with the latter. For our purposes, the following kinds of taxonomic structures are immediately relevant:

(1) Hierarchical taxonomic relations

a. Inclusion: A is a kind/type of B (e.g. An apple tree is a kind/type of tree).

b. Property relationship: B has property A (a red ball).

c. Partonomy (or meronymy): A is part of B (A finger is part of a hand).

d. Social relationship: A is a relative of B (Anne’s father, husband, etc.).

e. Possession: A has B (Anne’s car, name, etc.).

f. Location: B is located at A (the book on the table).

These taxonomic relations are both alike and different from one another in a number of properties and, depending on which property one highlights, various alternative groupings are possible. And each of these relations subsumes a number of relations which we will not further differentiate (see Cruse 1986 for detailed treatment). For example, (1a) also includes simple hyponymy (An A is a B) and set membership (Trees make a forest), and (1d) can be catenary (i.e. it can form indefinitely long chains: A → B → C, e.g. father of) or non-catenary (A → B *→ C, e.g. husband of ), or it may be transitive (A → B → C → A) or intransitive (A → B →C*→ A, e.g. father of B is not father of A). Not all of these relations, especially (1f), are commonly mentioned in treatments of taxonomy but are included here since they may have some bearing on the structure of head-dependent relationships.

We will now look into the question of whether, or to what extent, animals are able to perceive and/or produce taxonomic relations such as the ones listed in (1).

Tomasello and Call (1997: 133) note ‘‘that the natural categories of primates seem to be, like those of pigeons, on the concrete species level (e.g. crow) and the generic level (e.g. predator), not on the basic level (e.g. bird) which seems to be so important in human linguistically based cognitive processes.’’ Does this mean that these animals have at least a modest capacity of comprehending inclusiveness on what Tomasello and Call call the generic level?

Inclusion A common domain where inclusion relations manifest themselves is that of modifying compounding, as in our example in (1a). We have not found any clear instances of it in non-human animals, nor of productive compounding in general. The combinations of form–meaning pairings that have been reported can be interpreted in different ways: They could stand for unitary, non-compositional meanings, or they could be combinations of free forms. The chimpanzee Washoe has been reported as describing a swan by signing WATER BIRD, but such combinations could as well be due to mechanisms other than compounding nor do they seem to be productive (Rivas 2005). To be sure, quite a number of animals have been shown to combine form–meaning pairings that can be interpreted as noun–noun compounds. The gorilla Koko labeled a stale sweet roll a COOKIE ROCK, a mask an EYE HAT, a ring a FINGER BRACELET, a zebra a WHITE TIGER, or a Pinocchio doll an ELEPHANT BABY (Patterson 1978a: 88, 1978b: 195); but there is nothing to establish that these are indeed modifying compounds.

But the study by Savage-Rumbaugh et al. (1980: 922–4) suggests that their chimpanzees may have some notion of inclusion (1a): These animals interpreted the symbols (lexigrams for specific foods or tools) in order to then label them with lexigrams for the hypernyms ‘food’ or ‘tool’. The training of their chimpanzees Sherman and Austin led these animals to link the use of an object and the label of an object together. Sherman and Austin were then presented with fourteen food and fourteen tool items and they correctly categorized, respectively, twenty-four and twenty-five of the twenty-eight items, and the errors resulted with one exception from classifying tools used to prepare food (for example, knife and cutting board, which they often lick) as foods. Savage-Rumbaugh et al. (1980: 924) suggest that Sherman and Austin were able to treat ‘food’ and ‘tool’ as ‘‘representational labels, and to expand the use of these labels to novel exemplars because of training which encouraged the appearance of functional symbolic communication between chimpanzees.’’

Such observations are confirmed by research on other chimpanzees: Premack was able to establish that his trained chimpanzees Peony and Elizabeth could sort items on the basis of the labels plant vs. animal. The animals sorted leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers on the one hand, and fur, teeth, hair, and bones on the other into piles corresponding to the distinction plant vs. animal, respectively, at about the 78 and 80 percent level of accuracy. In a later step, erasers, pins, buttons, paper clips, and the like were added to the above items, and both subjects were led to re-sort to a new criterion. The previously separated plant and animal items were now combined and contrasted with hairpin, button, etc. (Premack 1976: 217–18).

Property relationship A paradigm instance of a property relationship would be one where there are nouns that take adjectives as modifiers. In fact, quite a number of animals have been taught what is described by their trainers as adjectives or modifiers; the gorilla Koko, for example, is said to have acquired distinct signs for sixteen modifiers, including ‘big’, ‘clean’, ‘cold’, ‘good’, etc. (Patterson 1978a: 79). But is this enough to develop a conceptual relationship between, for example, a noun and its modifier?

Trained African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) have been found to exhibit a remarkable ability to classify objects on the basis of physical properties, as is suggested by the following observations made by Pepper berg (1992): Using distinctions of color (blue, green, grey, orange, purple, rose, yellow), shape (2-corner, 3-corner, 4-corner, 5-corner, 6-corner), and material (chain, hide, key, paper, rock, wood, wool), her avian experimental subject Alex responded correctly in 63.3–83.3 percent of the thirty-four trials when asked for example: ‘‘What color is [item designated by shape and object label]?’’ This might suggest that Alex has some elementary concept of property relationship, in that he was able to assign different kinds of qualities to objects—that is, the expression rose paper referred to paper with the property of being colored rose. Furthermore, when presented for the first time with rose paper, Alex called it rose hide. After being allowed to chew on it, he called it paper. When prompted with ‘‘What color?’’ he replied ‘‘rose’’; prompted further with Rose what? he replied ‘‘rose... paper’’ (with a brief pause between words) (Kako 1999: 7).

An equally impressive behavior exhibited by Alex is the following: He appears to have extended the word rock as the label to refer to the property ‘hard’; he spontaneously produced the phrase rock corn and was given a kernel of dried corn. Subsequently, he continued to ask for dried corn with that phrase, and Pepperberg (1999a: 17) observes: ‘‘Alex did not learn rock as an adjective for hardness; rather he learned it as the label for a lava-stone beak conditioner. Whether he abstracted the concept of hardness from the rock and intentionally applied it to the dried corn to form rock corn or simply hit upon the term in the course of his practice ‘babbling’ will never be known.’’ However, rock did not acquire productivity, that is, it did not turn into a kind of modifier (Pepperberg 1987c: 46). That Alex might have acquired the taxonomic concept of inclusion is perhaps most clearly suggested by the following observations by Pepperberg:

He understands categories in terms of hierarchical levels, so he knows that there’s this weird (to him) sound called ‘‘color’’ and under that weird sound are grouped all these other sounds called ‘‘red,’’ ‘‘blue,’’ ‘‘green,’’ ‘‘yellow,’’ ‘‘orange,’’ etc. that relate to a specific set of physical attributes of objects. Similarly, he understands there is another weird sound, ‘‘shape,’’ and under that sound there are the other sound patterns ‘‘two-’’, ‘‘three-’’, ‘‘four-’’, ‘‘five-’’, and ‘‘six-corner’’ that relate to different physical attributes of the same objects. We can teach him new ways of categorizing items. If he’s already learned to categorize items by color and shape, we can then ask him to categorize them by number. (Pepperberg 1999a)

The chimpanzee Sarah was given sentences of the target form ‘‘Sarah take red dish,’’ and in taking the red dish, instead of either the green dish or the red/green pail, she is hypothesized to demonstrate comprehension of the attribute form. Premack (1976: 320) adds that Sarah’s performance went beyond that of the child, for although she had been taught ‘‘Sarah take dish’’ and ‘‘Sarah take red’’, she had never been taught ‘‘red dish’’. Furthermore, having acquired a question marker, Sarah understood the questions ‘‘Red ? apple’’ (What is the relation between red and apple?) and ‘‘Yellow ? banana’’, where the only word available to her was ‘‘color of’’. She substituted this word for the negative marker, thereby forming the sentences, ‘‘Red color of apple’’ and ‘‘Yellow color of banana’’ (Premack 1971: 813). And when exposed for the first time to cantaloupe and strawberry, which were unnamed, referred to as ‘‘yellow fruit’’ and ‘‘red fruit,’’ respectively, Sarah followed the instruction ‘‘Insert red fruit (in) dish’’ and correctly put the strawberry (not the cantaloupe) in the dish (Premack 1976: 323).

Another chimpanzee, Peony, was given sixteen blocks that differed in both color and form—red and yellow triangles and red and yellow squares, and she typically first sorted the blocks into two boxes on the basis of color. After the experimenter praised her, reassembled the blocks and gave them back, Peony shifted criteria, sorting them into the same boxes on the basis of shape, shifting criteria fourteen times in twenty trials (Premack 1976: 217).

Training modifier–object constituents also yielded some success with other animals. The orangutan Chantek began to use attributes, as in red bird and white cheese food eat (Miles 1990: 525) although there are no clues to the effect that he had a taxonomic understanding of the relationship. And it has also figured prominently in research projects on marine animals. The sea lions Rocky and Bucky studied by Schusterman and Krieger (1984) were taught modifiers for color (BLACK, WHITE, GREY), size (LARGE, SMALL), and locations (WATER, LAND), while the bottle-nosed dolphins Phoenix and Ake were given the locative modifiers LEFT, RIGHT, BOTTOM, and SURFACE (see below). The animals comprehended the meaning of these modifiers, even if there were combinations of modifiers; however, there is no indication that they under stood these constituents in terms of a taxonomic relation object–modifier, let alone head–modifier.

To conclude, the abilities described above are remarkable but do not really establish that any of these animals clearly had the concept of a hierarchical relationship of the form [object [modifier]]. Still, there are a few indications that could be interpreted in favor of such a relationship. We noted above that the gorilla Koko acquired distinct signs for sixteen modifiers, and in her two-sign utterances recorded in 1974, 75 percent of the ninety-eight attributive phrases recorded had the ‘‘adjective’’ preceding the ‘‘noun’’ (Patterson 1978a: 91)—a fact that might be taken to suggest a modifier–head pattern.

Partonomy That apes are capable of understanding the nature of part-whole relationships has been claimed by a number of researchers, but the evidence adduced is, with few exceptions, not really convincing. Indications of a possible partonomy concept surfaced in the chimpanzee Sarah, trained by Premack:

At a later time, after a period in which fruit was routinely prepared in Sarah’s view, the same tests were repeated, changed only by the addition of several new fruits—peach, grape, and fig—which in the meantime had been added to her vocabulary. On this second round of tests she was successful both in matching pieces of fruit to intact fruit and in matching names of fruit to intact fruit. There was a complete parallel, therefore, between the perceptual and the linguistic results. (Premack 1976: 138)

Sarah also comprehended the notion ‘‘name of’’ when it was used as part of a sentence object (‘‘accusative’’) phrase although in all her previous experience it was confined to subject (‘‘nominative’’) phrases. She had been trained to produce ‘‘X name of Y’’ statements (where X was the name of the object Y), yet subsequently she carried out instructions of the form ‘‘Sarah insert name-of-cracker in cup’’ versus ‘‘Sarah insert cracker in cup,’’ where ‘‘name-of’’ occurred as part of the object phrase (Premack 1976: 321)

Furthermore, we observed above that the chimpanzees Peony and Elizabeth were able to sort plant parts (leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers) into a plant class and animal parts (fur, teeth, hair, and bones) into an animal class (Premack 1976: 217–18). Note also that spider monkeys, after having discovered a tree with fruit that had just become ripe, often proceeded immediately to other trees with the same type of fruit, ‘‘implying that the fruit trees in their environment were categorized on the basis of the particular type of fruit they bore’’ (Tomasello and Call 1997: 113).

Social relationship Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002: 1575) observe that a wide variety of non-human primates have access to a rich knowledge of who is related to whom, as well as who is dominant and who is subordinate (see also Steklis 1988). In fact, primate understanding of relational categories is said to have evolved first in the social domain to comprehend third-party social relationships (Cheney and Seyfarth 1992; Tomasello 2000a: 173).

A number of non-primate species have been found to show understanding of at least some kind of kinship relationship; captive bat mothers (Tadarida brasiliensis), for example, recognize their pups, although pups do not recognize their mothers (Dechmann 2005: 487). Chimpanzees have a clear understanding of subordinate–dominant relations, and they can play different roles, acting as dominant in one situation but as subordinate in another situation—that is, they appear to understand a situation from a social cognitive point of view (Hare et al. 2000: 783). Hare and his associates conclude that the fact that the same individuals adopted different strategies depending on the role they played in the experiment, subordinate or dominant, suggests that they were not following some blind behavioral contingencies or rules, but rather that they really did understand something of the situation from a social-cognitive point of view.

Tomasello and Call (1994; see also Tomasello 2000a: 166–7) found that there is strong evidence for an understanding of third-party social relationships in a number of different primate species, but this ability to understand and form categories of third-party social relationships appears to be confined to primates. But there are cases of redirected aggression, as when A1 (or A’s kin) is attacked by B, A retaliates by attacking B’s kin. Such cases, which are suggestive of some kind of analogical reasoning, are not restricted to apes; when a vervet monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) A1 threatens an unrelated animal B1 following a fight between one of his relatives A2 and one of his opponent’s relatives B2, A1 acts as if he recognizes that the relationship between B1 and B2 is similar to his own relationship with A2 (Cheney and Seyfarth 1992: 139).

Furthermore, while there is no clear evidence that non-apes have a concept of social relationship, there are some data on monkeys suggesting that there is at least a concept of a relationship between a mother and her offspring: Cheney and Seyfarth (1980) observe that adult female vervet monkeys, analyzed under natural conditions, can distinguish screams of their own2-year-old juvenile offspring from the screams of other 2-year-olds in the group, and that the latter are able to associate specific screams with their mothers. Dasser (1988) trained two 5-year-old female Java monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), who were subsequently able to distinguish on color slides of members of their group mother–offspring relations from non-mother–offspring relations. Identification does not appear to have been achieved on the basis of perceptual features shared by the stimulus animals but rather on affiliation relations that the two subject animals had observed, enabling them to establish mother–child affiliation relations.

In sum, monkeys seem capable of classifying social relationships¹—for example ‘‘mother–offspring bonds’’ or ‘‘bonds between the members of family X’’—into types according to one or more abstract properties and to compare relationships on the basis of these representations (Cheney and Seyfarth 1992: 139, 142). Such findings, however, are not sufficient to establish that there is a taxonomic concept of social role relations such as ‘mother-of’, ‘child-of’, let alone ‘father-of’, in any of these animals.

Possession Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky (in press: 9–10) note: ‘‘But there are many aspects of animal territorial behavior that are difficult to explain without some primitive notion of ownership, such as a ‘home court advantage’ effect that persists even when both contestants are equally familiar with the territory. Detailed experiments on animal ‘ownership’ show how it is influenced by dominance, priority of access, value of resource, and species-specific rules and exceptions....Although one can always find differences, post hoc, between animal and human versions of behavior, these data suggest an ‘ownership’ concept in some animals with considerable overlap with our own.’’

In spite of these observations we have found no indication that there is a taxonomic relation possessor–possessee in any of the animals that have been studied. Such relations have been claimed; the gorilla Koko, for example, was able to produce combinations such as KOKO PURSE or HAT MINE (Patterson 1978a: 90), but there is nothing to show that they are suggestive of a possessive head–modifier construction.

Location Evidence for the presence of location relations is also poor. That the bottle-nosed dolphins Ake and Phoenix were able to understand a kind of locative modifier–object construction (Herman 1987, 1989) might be relevant but is certainly not sufficient evidence. The dolphins were confronted with a relational sentence with a modifier attached to either a transport word or a destination word, as in PERSON LEFT FRISBEE FETCH (for Ake) and FRISBEE FETCH BOTTOM HOOP (for Phoenix), and they were wholly correct on at least 63 percent of these tasks even though neither had been trained on this particular construction before. But perhaps more interesting is the following observation: Ake learned first arrangement patterns of the form [O1 + O2 + R], where O1 and O2 were object terms and R a relational action term. Later on she was taught to use LEFT and RIGHT as locative modifiers (M) before the object term, hence [M+O]. Without any training, she was exposed to the expanded structures [M+O1+O2+R] and [O1+M+O2+R], and she responded correctly to the first instance of a sequence of each type (Herman 1989: 24). This mightbeinterpretedasimplyingthatthedolphinwasabletounderstandthe nature of a hierarchical relation between [O]and [M + O], and possibly of a recursive structure; however, without any further evidence this remains no more than one possible interpretation.

Conclusion As we will, taxonomic relations such as the ones just discussed are a requirement for there to be noun modification— and also for noun phrase recursion.² The animals concerned are said to both comprehend and produce conglomerations of features and assign them to objects, such as ‘red’ and ‘banana’ in the case of the chimpanzee Sarah, or rose and paper in the case of the grey parrot Alex. And they appear to have abstract concepts such as ‘red-ness’ or ‘banana-ness’. But are these cases really suggestive of taxonomic hierarchy?

Alex may well conceive the expression rose paper as consisting of a modifier and a head; still, it does not become entirely clear whether rose paper might not as easily stand for a rose thing having the quality paper, or for a combination of a rose thing and paper—in other words, the evidence provided is not sufficient to establish that there is some kind of inclusion, where the taxon rose paper is included in, or is an instance of the category paper. And there is also no compelling evidence to show, for example, that the chimpanzee Sarah’s production ‘‘X name of Y’’ represents a taxonomic structure, where one is the hyponym and the other the hypernym. In other words, in most of the cases discussed, the evidence is not sufficient to establish a taxonomic relationship. Non-human primates appear to lack the ability to label relations between classes of objects (cf. Cheney and Seyfarth 1992: 143).

However, there are exceptions, that is, examples that seem to reflect taxonomic comprehension. Fairly clear cases were provided by our examples of inclusion relations and, slightly less convincing, of partonomy. The classification of food and tool by Sherman and Austin, and of plant vs. animal items, etc. by Peony and Elizabeth (see above) would seem to suggest that these chimpanzees can handle the taxonomic relation of inclusion and/or of part–whole relations.

¹ Noteworthy observations on social relationship have also been made on some avian species. White-fronted bee-eaters (Merops bullockoides), for example, are communally breeding birds which seem to distinguish between kin and non-kin, close relatives and non-relatives, and between unrelated neighbors and non-neighbors (see e.g. Emlen and Wrege 1988).

² Note that we are restricted to linguistic manifestations of recursion.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

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المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

نصائح علمية لتقوية دماغك وتقليل التدهور العقلي

هرمون الذكورة يفاقم عدوى خطيرة تهدد حياة الرجال

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المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

حرق الأمونيا.. كيف يساعد محطات الكهرباء في اليابان على إزالة الكربون؟

الشمس تقذف نتوءا عملاقا باتجاه قطبها الشمالي

كيف يخدع النعناع جسمك ليشعر بالبرودة؟.. صور عالية الدقة تكشف السر لأول مرة

ما الدور الذي يلعبه الـ AI في "حروب أميركا"؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Coordination

Linear arrangement

Construction Grammar

Case study I: the let alone construction

Typology of idiomatic expressions

Exploring idiomatic expressions

Constructions versus words and rules

Argument structure

Compositionality

Functional items

Motivating a construction grammar

Aspect and the count/mass distinction