Koko the gorilla could NOT use sign language.

[koolinkunming]

I have taken sign language courses and using your hands isnt language. There are forms. Inflection. Evolution. Room for innovation. Regional variations. This ape does nothing of the kind. An ASL observer noted the same thing. They were imagining signs. Filling in blanks with something where there was nothing.

That same dude recorded that there were some signs in your own article.

Sign language uses hands and language is even in the name duh. Dunno how using your hands isn’t language. They’ve even discovered that babies who are taught signs before they learn spoken language learn to speak at an accelerated pace I believe.

 

[JonesBones]

This ape understands sign language like that dog is a nazi and hates the Jews. lol.

 

[Amerikuracana]

What you "think" is irrelevant. It was using signs that some idiot used their imaginations to create dialogue with. You have provided no evidence of anything. Why wasn't the whole thing a farce? Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker think it was a farce. What do they know? What do you know that they don't? Make your case.

If the ape wanted a banana, it signed that it wanted a banana. It knew the sign for "I would like a banana." How deep the understanding was can be questioned, and it was not human level, but we probably started the same way. I imagine our language developed through telling story-lies. The females liked this advancement, and bred with those telling them. A million years later, here we are..

 

[koolinkunming]

I know that isn't the case for all dogs. This one guy trained his dog to return whatever dog toy he called out. He kept on training his dog and got to over 200 dog toys.

Yeah I remember seeing that. Incredible. I think they mean the average dog. They can understand several verbal commands and also visual right? So it’s not unreasonable for an ape or gorilla.

 

[JonesBones]

That same dude recorded that there were some signs in your own article.

Sign language uses hands and language is even in the name duh. Dunno how using your hands isn’t language. They’ve even discovered that babies who are taught signs before they learn spoken language at an accelerated pace I believe.

Sign language is a rule based system. It isn't simple mimicking other's gestures. A dog can put out his paw to "shake" too.

 

[JonesBones]

If the ape wanted a banana, it signed that it wanted a banana. It knew the sign for "I would like a banana." How deep the understanding was can be questioned, and it was not human level, but we probably started the same way. I imagine our language developed through telling story-lies. The females liked this advancement, and bred with those telling them. A million years later, here we are..

What does this even mean? lol. My cat meows for food and when to go out. We don't speak the same language even though we can find common ground.

 

[KnightTemplar]

The media is still perpetuating this hoax now that this bag of fur has croaked. From CNN. Says this thing "mastered" sign language. Absolute nonsense.

(CNN)Koko, the gorilla who mastered sign language and showed the world what great apes can do, has died.

She died Tuesday in her sleep at age 46, The Gorilla Foundation said in a statement.
"Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy," the release said. "She was beloved and will be deeply missed."

Good thread on this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65071

I mean, this "scientist" was the biggest fraud and had their mind made up. Ok, when cocoa, that is why I call it, says "nipple", she means "people" because they sound a like. Think of that. lol.

There is too much to really go into here so just read that thread. The "conversations" this hairbag had with humans are long and stupid. Make no sense unless the human post hoc adds an explanation. And the ape never used sign language. Not any recognizable kind but a supposed personal kind by this person and their trainer. And an ASL person who was there said they saw no signs where these "scientists" did. They made shit up.

Ban for Koko bashing.

 

[JonesBones]

Yeah I remember seeing that. Incredible. I think they mean the average dog. They can understand several verbal commands and also visual right? So it’s not unreasonable for an ape or gorilla.

That's just the thing, what people think is a breakthrough about Cocoa is something lower animals already do when you think about it properly.

 

[koolinkunming]

Sign language is a rule based system. It isn't simple mimicking other's gestures. A dog can put out his paw to "shake" too.

It’s all part of language/communication. So is every day body language. How do you not see this?

 

[koolinkunming]

That's just the thing, what people think is a breakthrough about Cocoa is something lower animals already do when you think about it properly.

But you’re saying it’s all bullshit. I’m confused about what exactly you’re getting at now.

 

[JonesBones]

In this latest book, J. Marshall Unger exposes the historical, scientific, cultural, and practical flaws accompanying the widespread belief that Chinese characters embody pure, language-less meaning.

@Amerikuracana

Sign languages build on written and spoken languages.

Taken together these pictographs make no sense as meaning-symbols but do make sense as sound-symbols: eye can sea ewe. The rebus idea seems obvious to us since we use it in children's games, but it actually constitutes a stupendous invention, an act of intellectual creation of the highest order -- a quantum leap forward beyond the stage of vague and imprecise pictures to a higher stage that leads into the ability to represent all the subtleties and precision expressible in spoken language. Writing is now directly, clearly, firmly related to language: to speech. If there was ever any question whether a symbol had a sound attached to it, this now receives a positive answer. In the earliest form known to us, the character for "wheat" was borrowed to represent the word "come" precisely because both were pronounced in the same way.

 

[JonesBones]

It’s all part of language/communication. So is every day body language. How do you not see this?

That is not language. Read through the posts.

To be clear, language is not just any set of agreed-upon calls. Many animals use calls and signals.

A language consists of a socially-agreed-upon (and inevitably evolving) set of arbitrary symbols (e.g., crying is not a component of language) coupled with a set of grammatical rules which allow these symbols to be combined in an infinite variety of unique and meaningful expressions.

Screaming "Aaaah, aaaah, aaaah!" is communication (depending on how it's inflected, it could mean "I'm extremely frightened" or "I'm ecstatically excited") but it is not language.

 

[mkt]

didn't Koko invent Rustlemania?

No but she invented the internet along with Al Gore.

 

[DeJulez]

The media is still perpetuating this hoax now that this bag of fur has croaked. From CNN. Says this thing "mastered" sign language. Absolute nonsense.

(CNN)Koko, the gorilla who mastered sign language and showed the world what great apes can do, has died.

She died Tuesday in her sleep at age 46, The Gorilla Foundation said in a statement.
"Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy," the release said. "She was beloved and will be deeply missed."

Good thread on this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65071

I mean, this "scientist" was the biggest fraud and had their mind made up. Ok, when cocoa, that is why I call it, says "nipple", she means "people" because they sound a like. Think of that. lol.

There is too much to really go into here so just read that thread. The "conversations" this hairbag had with humans are long and stupid. Make no sense unless the human post hoc adds an explanation. And the ape never used sign language. Not any recognizable kind but a supposed personal kind by this person and their trainer. And an ASL person who was there said they saw no signs where these "scientists" did. They made shit up.

Did you lose it during "Planet Of The Apes"?

 

[That209]

Surprised I haven’t seen any harambe jokes

 

[koolinkunming]

That is not language. Read through the posts.

To be clear, language is not just any set of agreed-upon calls. Many animals use calls and signals.

A language consists of a socially-agreed-upon (and inevitably evolving) set of arbitrary symbols (e.g., crying is not a component of language) coupled with a set of grammatical rules which allow these symbols to be combined in an infinite variety of unique and meaningful expressions.

Screaming "Aaaah, aaaah, aaaah!" is communication (depending on how it's inflected, it could mean "I'm extremely frightened" or "I'm ecstatically excited") but it is not language.

You’re missing the point. That’s not quite what I mean anyway.

 

[dildos]

The media is still perpetuating this hoax now that this bag of fur has croaked. From CNN. Says this thing "mastered" sign language. Absolute nonsense.

(CNN)Koko, the gorilla who mastered sign language and showed the world what great apes can do, has died.

She died Tuesday in her sleep at age 46, The Gorilla Foundation said in a statement.
"Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy," the release said. "She was beloved and will be deeply missed."

Good thread on this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65071

I mean, this "scientist" was the biggest fraud and had their mind made up. Ok, when cocoa, that is why I call it, says "nipple", she means "people" because they sound a like. Think of that. lol.

There is too much to really go into here so just read that thread. The "conversations" this hairbag had with humans are long and stupid. Make no sense unless the human post hoc adds an explanation. And the ape never used sign language. Not any recognizable kind but a supposed personal kind by this person and their trainer. And an ASL person who was there said they saw no signs where these "scientists" did. They made shit up.

shut your whore mouth, dont say anything bad about koko, she could do anything!

 

[JonesBones]

But you’re saying it’s all bullshit. I’m confused about what exactly you’re getting at now.

Cocoa does not know sign language any more than a dog does. The research is shady behind this. Hidden. Not repeatable. There is really nothing to argue here. I don't speak bee if I can superficially mimic one small part of a dance it makes. Jesus Christ.

The media is claiming that Cocoa "mastered" sign language. That is totally false. She didn't even understand it. I took 2 years of sign language and did not come close to "mastering" it. Though I understood it 100 times better than Cocoa.

 

[lts5025]

Harambe was set to expose this conspiracy and we all know what happened to him.

 

[DeJulez]

Cocoa does not know sign language any more than a dog does. The research is shady behind this. Hidden. Not repeatable. There is really nothing to argue here. I don't speak bee if I can superficially mimic one small part of a dance it makes. Jesus Christ.

The media is claiming that Cocoa "mastered" sign language. That is totally false. She didn't even understand it.

You ever get drunk and pretend your Charlton Heston hunting down Roddy McDowall?