Testing Washoe's Syntax

Testing if Washoe had acquired Syntax (Gardner & Gardner, 1975)

"Our strategy has been to obtain observations of the acquisition of sign language by young chimpanzees that can be compared with observations of the acquisition of spoken languages and sign languages by human children...If the children can be said to have acquired language on the basis of their performance, then the chimpanzees can be said to have acquired language to the extent that their performance matches that of the children."

Syntactic test: ask Washoe a variety of wh-questions
Tabulate percentage of responses of "correct grammatical category"
Responses only had to be grammatically, and not factually, correct
7 Limited analysis to relevant categories
7 Ignored repetitions

Question	Target	Example (Q)	Example (R)	Correct/Total
Who pronoun?	Proper Name	Who you?	Me Washoe	49/50
Who action?	Pr. Name/PRO	Who smoke?	You smoke	45/50
Who trait?	Pr. Name/PRO	Who good?	Good me	32/50
Whose PRO?	Possessive	Whose that?	Mine	45/50
What color?	Color	What color?	Bird white	47/50
What PRO?	Common noun	What that?	Book	50/50
What now?	Verb	What now?	Tickle	44/50
What want?	Noun/Verb	What want?	Want berry	41/50
Where action?	Locative	Where we go?	Out	38/50
Where object?	Locative	Where shoe?	There shoe	24/43

Washoe's responses compared favorably to those of two year-old children, who gave responses of the correct grammatical category 50% of the time.