ABSTRACT
Studies of animal language competencies bear on issues fundamental to a description of the cognitive skills and processes of animals. These skills include representational abilities, concept formation, knowledge acquisition, sequence discrimination, recall, and recognition. At the same time, these skills and processes are so broad that their scope, flexibility, and limitations cannot be judged fairly through examination of only selected portions of the data from the animal language studies. Nor can they be judged fairly through examination of only the language data. To do otherwise is to invite premature or biased conclusions. For example, Savage-Rumbaugh and Brakke (1990) and Savage-Rumbaugh (this volume, chapter 22) reach negative conclusions about the referential capabilities of dolphins by considering only a limited subset of the language-comprehension data obtained with these animals. Similar comments apply to Seidenberg and PetittO's (1987) claim that the pygmy chimpanzee Kanzi, as studied by Savage-Rumbaugh, McDonald, Sevcik, Hopkins, and Rupert (1986), was not using his lexigram symbols referentially. As Nelson (1987) stated: “[Seidenberg and PetittO's] case rests on a limited view of the evidence from children and a selective report of Kanzi’s behavior as documented by Savage-Rumbaugh et al.” (p. 295).
