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The most proficient nonhuman language speaker is Kanzi, a bonobo who lives at the Language
Learning Center at Georgia State University (Savage-Rumbaugh, & Lewin, 1994). [32] As you
can see in Note 9.44 "Video Clip: Language Recognition in Bonobos", Kanzi has a propensity
for language that is in many ways similar to humans’. He learned faster when he was younger
than when he got older, he learns by observation, and he can use symbols to comment on social
interactions, rather than simply for food treats. Kanzi can also create elementary syntax and
understand relatively complex commands. Kanzi can make tools and can even play Pac-Man.
Video Clip: Language Recognition in Bonobos
The bonobo Kanzi is the most proficient known nonhuman language speaker.
And yet even Kanzi does not have a true language in the same way that humans do. Human
babies learn words faster and faster as they get older, but Kanzi does not. Each new word he
learns is almost as difficult as the one before. Kanzi usually requires many trials to learn a new
sign, whereas human babies can speak words after only one exposure. Kanzi’s language is
focused primarily on food and pleasure and only rarely on social relationships. Although he can
combine words, he generates few new phrases and cannot master syntactic rules beyond the level
of about a 2-year-old human child (Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991). [33]
In sum, although many animals communicate, none of them have a true language. With some
exceptions, the information that can be communicated in nonhuman species is limited primarily
to displays of liking or disliking, and related to basic motivations of aggression and mating.
Humans also use this more primitive type of communication, in the form of nonverbal
behaviorssuch as eye contact, touch, hand signs, and interpersonal distance, to communicate
their like or dislike for others, but they (unlike animals) also supplant this more primitive
communication with language. Although other animal brains share similarities to ours, only the
human brain is complex enough to create language. What is perhaps most remarkable is that
although language never appears in nonhumans, language is universal in humans. All humans,
unless they have a profound brain abnormality or are completely isolated from other humans,
learn language.