research into the Washoe findings and follow-ups with some personnel involved with her show that she has not even come close to approaching the level of expertise that we would consider to be competence in language.
It depends on how you look at it. First or all, there are multiple levels upon which the use of language can be understood. For example, many scientists make a distinction between being able to understand language versus being able to construct a new sentence.
It's complicated, but consider the following work with a bonobo (sister species to the chimpanzee) named Kanzi at the San Diego Zoo:
[excerpted from "Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape" by Franz DeWaal]
"According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi makes rudimentary sentences of two or three utterances, the ordering of which shows some regularity, This could be interpreted as a grammarlike structure, a claim hotly contested by linguists for whom grammar is the touchstone of language.
Even more than his utterances, however, Kanzi's understanding of spoken English is ruly impressive. Many animals are able to gues what we mean when we talk to them. They probably do so by paying attention to our tone of voice, gaze direction, and the entire context in which the intertion occurs. Kani, however, listens through earphones to a battery of words spoken by a person in another room, thus preventing unintentional cluing. Whithout hesitation he selects the corresponding picture from among a pile of pictures. He hears "melon" and picks the melon picture; he hears "cat"and picks the cat picture. His comprehension skills go even further: based on what he hars, he is able to connect different pictures. For example, if Savage-Rumbaugh tells him, "Give the dog a shot," he picks up a hypodermic syringe from among many objects on the floor, tears off the cap, and injects his stuffed toy dog."
Whether apes can construct new sentences (as most researchers who work with them believe) or not, their comprehension of language is truly amazing.
Speaking of Kanzi, the following is a video clip of him playing PacMan!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8674533802963928643&q=chimp+pacman&hl=en
