"Alex and Me" summary

Alex started comprehending and understanding labels. When he was alone he would sometimes practice the name of a new label that was recently introduced to him. A few months into his training he was able to group things together by label. For example, he usually worked with labeling a silver key. Pepperberg and her assistant gave Alex a blue key, and asked him to identify it. Alex called it a key, meaning that he was able to notice a key is still a key, even if the color is different. “This kind of cognitive ability had  never before been demonstrated in nonhuman animals, not even chimpanzees. According to the book, after a year of training, Alex was able to label seven objects and was beginning to learn how to label colors. Alex’s training was progressing greatly. he was now able to communicate a sense of refusal when he didn’t want to do something. Ultimately Alex was able to pronounce and use the word “no” correctly.
    Although Pepperberg is accomplishing her goals of animal communication, she explains how hard it was for her to be taken seriously. in the world of research, “…published papers are the measure of worth…” (Pepperberg 79). This was something that Pepperberg lacked. she wrote an article for the American journal “Science” and the journal “Nature”, about Alex’s progress, and how a non mammalian animal has reached goals that not even a chimp has been able to do. Unfortunately both articles rejected her article.
    This did not discourage Pepperberg, she continued working on Alex’s training. Pepperbergs next step was for Alex to put together a few labels to make a phrase. They started by introducing a clothes pin as “peg wood”, which Alex had understood. Then they gave him a green clothes pin. Alex was able to respond “green wood peg wood”, which gave them the satisfaction that Alex understood. Pepperberg wrote about this accomplishment, along with other accomplishments Alex had reached, and was able to finally get approved for a grant to fund her research.
    Although this book is about Alex learning language, the author gives us definitions about linguistics, which are useful to class. Pepperberg introduces the “acoustic envelop” which is the sound shape of a word, and “Segmentation” which is the “…ability to take pieces of two phrases apart and reassemble them appropriately” (Pepperberg 84). By introducing these definitions I am better able to understand Alex’s training, as well as use the knowledge of these definitions in class.