Re: Question about linguistics

"Red Dragon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 

> The Chimpanzee  speak in grunts and groan and has good intelligence. 
> I saw on TV  a scientist  training up Chimps to communicate using
> charts and drawings. .   And the Chimp understand human speech.   For
> instance,  the scientist  say to the Chimp " What do you want to eat
> today?",   she follows by showing it  a chart  of pictures showing
> food,  scenery and varities of toys and the chimp point to an apple. 
> " Where do you want to go ?"  and the Chimp point to the playground .
> 
> The problem with Chimp is that it does not  have a voice box.   Is it
> possible to transplant a voice box to a Chimp and teach it to speak?

No. While it is true that chimps can do some simple communication using 
symbols, their processing abilities fall well short of speech, even if they 
had the vocal equipment. 

But it is also true that one should not underestimate the amount of 
communication between chimps, even if most of it is non-verbal. It is now 
recognized that chimps do have rudiments of culture. I also believe it has 
been shown that dogs can recognize human non-verbal signals better than 
humans, perhaps because humans have become specialized to focus on verbal 
communication. 

Yours,

Bill Morse