Viki was the subject of one of the first experiments in

ape language Research into great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans to communicate with humans and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, Yerkish#Lexigram_concept, lexigrams, and mimicking human spee ...

. Viki was raised by Keith and Catherine Hayes in the same manner as a

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

infant An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...

, to see if she could learn human

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...

s. She was given

speech therapy Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

, which involved the Hayeses (her adopters) manipulating her lower jaw. Eventually, she was able to voice four words: *mama *papa *up *cup This extremely limited success was at first interpreted as evidence that apes were not capable of using

human language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

. However, further experiments in which chimpanzees were instructed in the use of

American sign language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...

indicated that Viki's achievements had been significantly hampered by physiological limitations—chimpanzees are not able to produce the sounds that make up

human speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

. Viki lived like a human, even with a human sibling, for three years with her trainers, Keith and Cathy Hayes, with the notion that the other failed attempts of teaching a non-human primate a human language failed because these studies used environments too dissimilar to a human's environment when infants learn language. The immersive language experienced failed, however, after three years Cathy Hays said “the only obvious and important deficit in the ape’s innate intelligence, as compared with man’s, is a missing facility for using and understanding language” (Fitch, 2002). The faculty argument is common in the field of evolutionary linguistics and biolinguistics.

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

called it a "language acquisition device" innate to humans which allows for our use of the matured "language organ" or faculty (See Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002). Chomsky, conceding that language has share components across multiple species and domains, now uses the terms "Broad" and "Narrow," Narrow being the only human trait of discrete infinity.

References

# Catherine Hayes (1951), ''The Ape in Our House''. New York: Harper. # K.J. Hayes and C Hayes, C (1952). "Imitation in a home-raised chimpanzee". ''Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology'', 45, 450–459. # K.J. Hayes and C.H. Nissen. (1971). "Higher mental functions of a home-raised chimpanzee". In Schrier, A.M. and Stollnitz, F. (eds). ''Behaviour of Non-human Primates'', 4,50-115. New York, Academic Press. #Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch. (2002). The Faculty of Language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? ''Science'' (298)5598, pp. 1569–1579. DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 Apes from language studies Individual chimpanzees Talking animals {{primate-stub

See also

References