Looking for structure: Is the two-word stage of language development in apes and human children the same or different?
Previously published corpora of two-word utterances by three chimpanzees and three human children were compared to determine whether, as has been claimed, apes possess the same basic syntactic and semantic capacities as 2-year old children. Some similarities were observed in the type of semantic rel...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Department of English Studies Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts Adam Mickiewicz University
2014-01-01
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| Series: | Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching |
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| Online Access: | http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/ssllt/article/view/3932 |
| Summary: | Previously published corpora of two-word utterances by three chimpanzees and three human children were compared to determine whether, as has been claimed, apes possess the same basic syntactic and semantic capacities as 2-year old children. Some similarities were observed in the type of semantic relations expressed by the two groups; however, marked contrasts were also uncovered. With respect to the major syntactic mechanism displayed in two-word child language, namely word order, statistically significant differences were found in all three comparisons that were tested. These results indicate that chimpanzees do not exhibit the linguistic capacities of 2-year old children. |
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| ISSN: | 2083-5205 2084-1965 |