Patkowski, Mark2014-11-282014-11-282014-10Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2014, vol. 4, no. 3, pp.507-5282083-5205http://hdl.handle.net/10593/12235Previously published corpora of two-word utterances by three chimpanzees and three human children were compared to determine whether, as has been claimed, apes possess the same basic syntactic and semantic capacities as 2-year old children. Some similarities were observed in the type of semantic relations expressed by the two groups; however, marked contrasts were also uncovered. With respect to the major syntactic mechanism displayed in two-word child language, namely word order, statistically significant differences were found in all three comparisons that were tested. These results indicate that chimpanzees do not exhibit the linguistic capacities of 2-year old children.enlanguage developmentanimal languagecross-species compari- sonsemantic relationsword orderArtykułhttps://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2014.4.3.7