User:Pritom Kumar Saha/sandbox

Yerkish Language

Lexigram

Yerkish refers to an artificial language, which was created in 1971 by Ernst Von Glasersfeld and used by Duane Rumbaugh and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who worked with primates at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta Georgia. The Yerkish language, named after the Primate Research Center was developed for the use by the primates which were non-humans, for example, the ape family which includes the Gorillas and Chimpanzees. The language employs the use of a keyboard containing 384 keys, which are symbols corresponding to the symbols and the ideas that are to be communicated by the apes through pressing. These keys are also referred to as the lexigrams, which represent a word but not necessarily indicative to the object to which it relates as a sign of distinguishing them from the symbols, used by the human primates.  

History

Yerkish began as a result of the need by the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta to investigate the possibility of the non-human primates communicating with the Human primates, through the use of the computer technology, since the non-human primates lacked the capability of communicating by the use of their voices like the human beings. The idea which was created in 1970 resulted as a need to develop a new way of communication with the non-human primates, who would never learn a spoken language but were already able to use the sign language and were quick in using their fingers to communicate.

Von Glasersfeld and his longtime partner Pier Paolo Pisani in 1971 under a research project funded by the National Institute of Health.

In early winter 1970, von Glasersfeld represented his proposal to the National Institute of health requesting the funds for a four-year period in which the research was to be conducted and thus the grant for the study was awarded to the project enabling Glasersfeld and his longtime partner and computer specialist Pier Paolo Pisani to commence the project.

The study was conducted on a young female Chimpanzee, Lana who was born on October 7, 1970. In the first phase of the project, the researchers tested the ability of the Chimpanzee to recognize the Plexiglas walls, by fixing a keyboard with 5*5 keys as a starter package for Lana, that would be later developed depending on Lana's preference in communication. The keyboard, therefore, was connected with the computer outside the room, which was closely monitored by the researchers to understand the behavior of the subject. In the first phase, Lana mastered the critical combination, which contained the vocabulary and the grammar of the Yerkish vocabulary and the grammar, thus learning the art of the sentence creation and checking its correctness.

In the second phase, the keyboard and the computer added a row of food and drink dispensers which were considered as the basic needs, for example, bananas, apples, bread, chows and juices which were activated through the computer. This would have facilitated the ability of Lana to feed herself through creating requests on the network and typing the symbols on the keyboard which matched with what she needed.  

Purpose of teaching Yerkish Language to non-primate humans

The purpose of the Yerkish language was mainly to explore the linguistic potential of the non-human primates. Yerkish language would enable the human in identifying the potential of the non-human primates to communicate in the similar ways as the humans through the use of the computer, despite their inability to use coordinated voice as a tool of communication. The Yerkish language was also created as a way of understanding the non-human primate psychology, by understanding their environment and organizing it through communication.

Secondly, teaching Yerkish to the apes would help the scientists in shedding light of the human languages and its uniqueness. For human beings, it would be hard to understand the uniqueness of the languages, since most of the languages are as old as mankind. To understand the procedure in which the early man learned various languages would be easier compared to the learning process of the non-primate humans through the Yerkish language.  

De Luce and Wilder stated the discovery of better methods of teaching the children who were mentally retarded. In their research they compared the intelligence of the non- humans primates to that of children. The intelligence of the non-human primates under the research was compared to that of the human children thus in understanding how the apes learnt the language the skills would have been easily to educate retarded children.

Ethical consideration in teaching Yerkish Language to non-human primates

Unlike humans, where education is a right and every child has the right of attending school to learn, this is a different case with the animals. In conducting the research projects, scientists withdrew the non-human primates from their habitats. Ethically this would have been considered inappropriate, though there are disagreements about the ethical implications of using the non-human primates in language research. Douglas Adams considered the efforts of the scientist in teaching non-human primates a new language as inappropriate since the animals have a language they understand. Though not a primatologist, Adams considers domesticating the non-human primates is making them less intelligent as compared to non-human primates in their original habitats.

Characteristics of the Yerkish Language

The language contains three indispensable characters; it is created to contain a set of artificial signs which are also known as the lexicon. Just like any other language it contains a grammar which is a set of rules that govern the creation of sentences which are portrayed as a sequence of lexical entries, and last, it contains signs which are used as symbols.  

The set of artificial signs as established by Von Glasersfeld contained the necessary items which assumed to be of interest to the non-human primates at the time of the research and have over the years increased to form 384 characters. Each of the 328 keys used in the Yerkish language represents a word design for a single concept known as the lexigrams. These keys were created utilizing a non-representational design that emphasized their symbolic characters. The keys are created in a different form from the symbols used by the human primates to symbolize the difference and the ability of the animals to master their language.  

Yerkish contains a set of rules in the creation of sentences. The lexical entries on the keyboard are divided into classes. The lexical entries are designed by a correlational language which is defined regarding the functional characteristic to determine their morphology and the roles they would play in the sentences constructed. The keyboards which contain the Yerkish language are created in a way that each of the symbols contains an English word which is transmitted by a sound when pressed by the non-human primate to create a communication factor.

Conclusion

Yerkish refers to a language created by Von Glasersfeld and his longtime partner Pier Paolo Pisani in 1971 under a research project funded by the National Institute of Health. The purpose of the language was to determine the ability of the non-human primates to communicate with the humans through a digital keyboard which contained lexigrams. Since Yerkish is an artificial language, its set of keys are created differently from the human keyboards with the symbols representing some of the essential need by the non-human primates. The symbols on the key do not necessarily look similar to the items they are used to describe but serves as a representation of the words.