African Gray parrots and language

There’s currently some discussion on Retrospectacle about an African Grey Parrot named N’Kisi. (I’m the ever-controversial ‘fontor’ in comments.) His owner Aimee is claiming that he can understand language and have conversations.

Now African Grays are intelligent little buggers, I’ll give ’em that. And they are very good at remembering and repeating sounds, including speech sounds. Wouldn’t it be tempting to think that the bird was thinking of stuff to say and then saying it to you? Unfortunately, yes. All you need is one believing owner, an uncritical news media, and a credulous public, and voila! Bird conversation.

I’ve mentioned before that there’s a distinction between communication and language. My beloved big dumb cat is great at communicating. (It’s always about food for him, it seems.) But there’s no indication that he’s using a kind of language. That would involve a knowledge of syntax, the system of language. He’d have to be able to take sentences, and break them into their constituent words. Then he’d have to understand that certain words can be used in place of other words to make new sentences. I’m afraid Cattums is not up to it, though it’s something every human child can do. Kids have the brains for it.

Is a parrot’s brain big enough to process language in the way Aimee is claiming? I know very little about neurology, but Shelley at Retrospectacle does work in that area. She seems to think that it’s not out of reach for an African Gray. (Does it matter that she’s a bird fancier?)

I’m still not sure. Let’s take a closer look at some of the things that are going on when you carry on a conversation.

• You have plans and goals, which helps you decide who to talk to for what reasons.
• You have intentions, which you use to decide where the conversation is going to go at any given moment.
• You are able to use real-world knowledge, which comes into play when you hear and evaluate the information in the dialogue.
• You have a knowledge of context, and that will help you if someone refers to something that you can’t immediately determine.
• You can remember what’s happened so far in the conversation, so you can tell if (for instance) the questions you had when you came into the conversation have been answered.
• You are able to interpret what other people are saying and fit that into your plans.
• You can figure out the meanings of ambiguous words.
• Most amazingly, you can make guesses about other people’s beliefs, knowledge, feelings, and intentions.
• All in real time.

Aimee, the owner, is claiming that N’Kisi is doing all this AND engaging in wordplay, joking, and inventing new words.

What’s more likely — that a parrot is walking around with that kind of hardware crammed into such a small headspace, or that the bird is saying items from a repertoire and the owner is doing all the conversational work? If Koko, with a much larger brain, is going through the motions, no way is N’Kisi going to do any better.

But that’s just a guess based on my limited knowledge. Maybe brain size isn’t the sine qua non. Maybe we don’t really need these huge brains of ours, and we could do language with a brain the size of a cashew. Maybe the rest of our brains are just heat regulation and untapped potential. In an amazing world like ours, perhaps the parrot understands us and is capable of response. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So let’s see if N’Kisi’s output is sufficiently compelling to warrant a closer look.

There’s one example here.

Aimee: Ok, ya ready? (Aimee pushes button, toy says ‘square’ and makes music.)

N’Kisi: (Enthusiastic tone) That’s so cool!

Aimee: Isn’t it?

N’Kisi: Can ya hear(music is playing)There’s a square.

(Aimee pushes button again; toy says ‘square’)

N’Kisi: Lemme try (? illegible). Look, there’s a square!

(Aimee pushes button again; toy says ‘square’)

N’Kisi: Can you see that?

Aimee: Yeah!

N’Kisi: Look!

Aimee: Isn’t it cool?

In attempts to teach human language to primates, linguists found that animals tend to repeat words provided by their trainers. One thing I’m noticing is that Aimee says “cool” a lot. So does N’Kisi. I wonder how many times N’Kisi has heard Aimee say that.

Aimee: Wow!

(Aimee pushes the button; toy says ‘square’)

N’Kisi: Wow! there’s a me…

There’s the prompting again — N’Kisi says ‘wow’ right after Aimee does.

N’Kisi: You could try-angle. (word play, due to grammatical context)

Aimee: OK. (Aimee pushes another button, toy says ‘triangle’.) See? (pushes it again, ‘triangle’).

N’Kisi: Look at the square.

(Aimee pushes the button that says ‘square’.)

N’Kisi: There’s a square.

Notice how Aimee is cueing off of N’Kisi, pushing the buttons he suggests. This gives the impression that there’s a real back-and-forth conversation going on. Or it could be that the parrot is training the owner.

The word ‘square’ is also used a lot. The parrot is likely running through its list of items involving the word ‘square’ (which is good word recognition), but to a caring owner it could look like it’s making new utterances that build on previous ones.

Here’s my bit: I think N’Kisi’s ability to remember Aimee’s utterances and play them back with such fidelity is remarkable. (I think the same thing about the lyrebird, who can imitate other birds’ calls — and even chainsaws — with startling accuracy.) But I see no evidence that the parrot is understanding and using language as humans do. I don’t even know what words and sentences N’Kisi’s been exposed to, so I can’t tell whether any of these utterances are novel. What I see here is similar to primate studies: the animal makes a sign, the human carer interprets the mung out of it, and everyone remembers the hits and not the misses. The only difference here is that the subject is speaking with a clear human-like voice, which makes it even more tempting to jump to the conclusion that N’Kisi is using language. But it ain’t necessarily so.

I’d also like to address Aimee’s claims that N’Kisi is psychic. That’s for another day, though.