What property did Washoe's language seem to have when she used an expression such as ""water bird"" to refer to a swan?

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English

Ashton Salazar

6 October, 12:27

What property did Washoe's language seem to have when she used an expression such as ""water bird"" to refer to a swan?

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Answers (1)

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Nadia Hammond · Answer 1

Productivity.

Explanation:

Productivity is a property of human language that enables humans to combine words or symbols, sounds or phrases in new ways in order to express particular ideas. It allows users to create new expressions, be creative or in other words open-endedness. Humans continually create new expressions and utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations.

Washoe, a female 19 chimpanzee was the first non-human to communicate using American Sign Language (ASL) as part of a research experiment on animal language acquisition. By her use of expression of "water bird" for a swan, she is using the productivity property of human language.