Language and Chimpanzees

In learning about and discussing language acquisition and development you will inevitably hear something about apes and monkeys and their language capabilities. Most of the psychology textbooks that I have encountered briefly mention something about the language capabilities of signing chimpanzees or other apes or monkeys and quickly dismiss the idea that apes possess true language and that their language will never resemble human language. In my opinion, the field of psychology does not pay enough attention to language acquisition and development in apes like chimpanzees. Although chimpanzees will never possess verbal language, they are indeed capable of language, not just simple communication. I have personally witnessed chimpanzees using American Sign Language (ASL) at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) at Central Washington University.
Siegler and Alibali, in their book, Children’s Thinking, claim “humans seem to be the only animals who are interested in communicating information that is of no direct importance for survival” and that “even chimpanzees who have learned to communicate quite well through sign language rarely communicate just for the sake of communicating.” At Pacific University, I took a class called Chimpanzee Behavior and Sign Language With Chimpanzees with Dr. Mark Bodamer who has worked extensively with the Chimpanzees at CHCI. I even had the opportunity to visit CHCI twice. In the class and through direct experience I witnessed Chimpanzees using ASL to communicate both with humans and their fellow Chimpanzees about random things that had nothing to do with survival. For example, on my first visit to CHCI, a chimpanzee named Tatu noticed that a fellow student of mine had a lip piercing. Tatu, while looking at my classmate repeatedly signed “ouch” “ouch.” The fact that Tatu was able to recognize that a ring through a lip probably hurts and to sign about it was amazing and it also convinced me that chimpanzees are capable of language.
In addition to this, the chimpanzee Washoe, one of the most famous chimpanzees and a pioneer in the area of signing chimps, recognized and was elated to see our professor Mark. At the first sight of him, she signed “friend” “friend.” Not only was this incredibly touching, it showed be that chimps have the ability to remember a person who was important to them and to pull a word from their vocabulary to refer to that person.
Something else that I found fascinating in my studies of signing chimps was the fact that there are documented accounts of chimpanzees signing to themselves when they are alone. This makes me think about the definition of language: a shared system of arbitrary symbols that refer to things even in the absence of those things. The chimpanzees in this study signed to themselves about objects without holding or observing the object. In other words, the chimps were signing to themselves about objects in the absence of those objects. Mark Bodamer and his colleagues discovered this by videotaping the chimpanzees who were not aware of the cameras.
Although chimpanzees do not share most of the characteristics of human language, from what I have experienced, they do share some. They seem to be able to pull from their vocabulary to comment on novel things such as a lip piercing and to recognize that the piercing might hurt. They are also, from what I have seen, able to sign about objects when the object was no where to be seen, which is what makes up a large part of language.