"Did someone just end a sentence with a preposition?" Photo: ahisgett/Flickr
It's not just your annoying cousin with the English degree who notices your grammatical mistakes. According to a recent Harvard University study, Cottontop tamarin monkeys have an innate ability to notice when certain basic grammatical rules are violated. Previous studies have shown that these monkeys can learn to understand some basic grammar, but not complex sentence structures (ex. the "if... then..." sentence construction). But this is the first study to demonstrate specifically that they are also able to recognize incorrect word usage.
"We were really curious whether monkeys could even detect the common trend found in human language to add sounds to word edges, like adding 'ed' in English to create the past tense," study author Ansgar D. Endress told National Geographic News.
The study used the nonsense word "shoy" coupled with prefixes and suffixes like "ba" and "mo" to form new words like "bashoy" and "shoymo." One group of monkeys learned words with only prefixes added, and another group learned words only with suffixes. Both heard words consisting of the same "shoy" root word. Eventually, the groups were combined and played audio recordings of a series of words. If a monkey responded in puzzlement to a word that violated that monkey's learned grammar, the monkey was counted as having recognized the error.
The response rate to incorrect words was 52 percent, compared to only 37 percent response to correct words. The results are notable because the recognition was spontaneous. That is, although the tamarins were taught the manufactured words used in the study, they were not trained to recognize the grammatically incorrect forms.
In what other ways do we underestimate our primate cousins? Maybe it's only a matter of time before they learn to use the Internet and pettily flame us on message boards when we make minor mistakes.
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My cousin said, six decades ago, that the only reason primates other than man did not learn to talk was that they were smart enough to know that Man would make slaves of them.
Animals catching grammatical errors?? Garrison Keilor of Lake Wobegon, MN, has had this for years. He has a dog that comes on occasionally who growls when you make an error, and barks out loud if you tell a lie!!
Ridulous. This is a hoax.
Doesn't surprise me in the least. My boss can't spell, can't use correct grammar, and when his secretary writes his e-mails, we can always tell because they make sense. If one more business or person writes, "Loose 10 pounds by Saturday," I'll hire a monkey to make the proper correction.
A HARVARD STUDY HAS JUST TOLD ME WHERE I'M GOING. IT'S NOT OUT OF THIS WORLD. MY EXOTIC PRIMATE COUSINS ARE TAKING ENGLISH LESSONS, TO SEND ME TO SOME EXOTIC PLACES THEY CAME FROM. I FIGURED IT WAS UTOPIA, BUT IT'S A MORE EXOTIC PLACE. CAUSINS ARE SENDING ME VIA, MESSAGE BOARDS.TO, 'BASHOY' "SHOYMO" WITH "BA" AND "MO." I'LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN WE GET SOME/WHERE. DON'T WAIT. SUPPOSE TO BE ERRORS, "BA" AND "MO!" JUST WHEN I KNOW EVERY/THING, I KNOW/NOTHING, NOT EVEN "BA" AND "MO." DIDN'T GO TO HARVARD! -- BING...
Okay. So a few more lessons given to these monkeys and we can make them college English professors? Really, now. Who in the world thought of an experiment like this? What purpose does it serve, really? So someone who cares for the monkey uses improper grammar and the monkey corrects them? What's the point?
Frankie,
It's important because by understanding how these primates think we can learn more about them, humans and the world. Sometimes something learned that seems insignificant becomes of great importance in another context in the future. For example, many treatments for immune system disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis came from the study of AIDS. Also many items that we use today were made possible by all the research done by NASA. Education and discovery are of vital importance to the future of the planet and the human race.
What if understanding how brains recognize and handle language someday helps someone who's had a stroke regain the ability to speak?
Now if only people could recognize their grammatical errors. On here I constantly see people saying "could of" instead of "could have" among other mistakes.
I feel I am in good company with the monkey. I also like to swing from trees, negotiate through the concrete jungle and yell jungle calls to passing motorists. I am just as hard on myself as I am on others when it comes to spelling and grammar, sometimes worse. I am sorry if I have ever offended anyone on a message board with an anonymous remark.
The monkeys do not know grammar, they only know sounds they were made to become accustomed to. We are not told whether these sounds (make-belief words to us, but merely specific sounds to monkeys) were associated with something like a treat for the monkey if it reacted to the satisfaction of the researchers. If so, the poor monkey would be disturbed when hearing a similar sound but feel cheated of a chance for the treat.
The researchers used bad logic. They anthopomorphized, unwittingly attributing human traits to the monkeys. Then they drew illogical inferences from their physical data (sounds followed by monkey reactions) combined with their unrecognized assumptions about monkeys. Since they or their leaders have a PhD, they make the assumption that they are scientists and that all they do is scientific. They fail to recognize they have engaged in a not too smart rationalization, which disqualifies them as scientists, since at the very least science should make one fairly rational in reasoning.
Respectfully submitted.
Marcel B. Matley
San Francisco, CA
C'mon. They're at Harvard. With cut-throat colleagues who would eagerly critique, indeed damn, any flaws in their methodology.
In addition, before journals publish studies of any kind, the studies are peer reviewed -- read by other highly accomplished people in the same field who decide if the methodology is appropriate and the conclusions are reasonable. If not, the study isn't published.
Isn't it somewhat likely that in writing this article for the general public, descriptions of the research were simplified (rather than the accusations you're making being reasonable)?
ok really the monkeys had a 52 percent incorrect rate so why should we care about this study if they had like a 30 percent rate then maybe i just think this is stupid no offense to anyones opinions and soon in 100 years the monkeys are gonna be ruling us like in planet of the apes. . . except those were apes but they're all the same
My comments are censored by AOL. Where is the First Amendment?
You have to keep in mind they have protect their rights too.
X3 Yet another reason why I think humans AREN'T superior creatures. They create language and grammar, and yet can't even use it properly but such an 'inferior' animal can understand what most humans can't even comprehend.
All animals have souls that incarnate in different bodies and learn and evolve to the point where they can incarnate in a human body. The many abilities and things that humans have and do were experienced by the soul when it was in an animal.