Kanzi: Evidence of Syntax Knowledge? (Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991)

Like Nim, Kanzi seemed to have regular orders in which he would use signs.

Action-Agent            119 CARRY you (gesture)

Agent-Action            13

Action-Object            39 KEEP-AWAY BALLOON

Object-Action            15

Goal-Action            46 COKE CHASE

Action-Goal            10

Entity-Demonstrative    182 PEANUT that (gesture)

Demonstrative-Entity    67

Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh claimed that Kanzi had picked up the human syntactic rule of placing an object after the action being done to that object:

                            Action-Object Object-Action

Early Kanzi            3                     7

Late Kanzi             31             6

Human                     51             7

More significantly, Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh claimed that Kanzi had formulated his own syntactic rule--namely, that of always placing a gesture (as opposed to a lexigram) last in a two-symbol combination.

                                    Agent-Action     Action-Agent

Kanzi    LexigramGesture        7     116

            Lexigram-Lexigram 6     3

Human Lexigram-Gesture        14    0

            Lexigram-Lexigram 14     0

                Dem.(gesture)-Entity     Entity-Dem. (gesture)

Kanzi        67                     182

Human        3                         2

                        Gesture 1st Gesture 2nd

Kanzi: Goal-Action 0             30

Kanzi: Object-Agent 1             7

The researchers had one misgiving--that giving a gesture after pointing to a lexigram might be Kanzi's way of indicating that he had understood what the lexigram meant.