Savage bonobo, no!

[jotham]

I'm glad to see that nobody's disagreed about what the sentence means.

Maybe you could give me the whole context of a paragraph or something. I'm not quite sure I "get" the gist of the whole thing from the two sentences you gave.

[fluffyhamster]

Dubyuh has no sprachgefuhl.
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/sprachgefuhl

Is this an American usage? Just curious.

OK, the previous units introduced Kanzi, said that he'd learned a lot with Sue S-R, so 'he can communicate with her' and now 'knows' or 'understands' about 500 words.

The unit with the mistake runs as follows:

A: How does Kanzi communicate with the scientist?
B: He uses symbols on a keyboard. Look at this picture of the keyboard.
A: How does he use it?
B: He presses a symbol on the keyboard. And he can get that thing.
A: Does he press only one symbol?
B: No. He often presses some symbols together.
A: He's very clever!

Lucy, forget about the 'smoked kippers', they aren't even a "red herring", just me being silly.

Your thoughts about the usual form-meaning pairings for 'get' are pretty much what I'd say too (would you object though to 'Do you think the students can get it'='Do you think the students will get it?').

The only other things I came up with were that the conjoined clauses perhaps more implies two sequential actions rather than the 'pressing' being simultaneous with (and symptomatic of) any "getting it" (not however that e.g. 'If/when he presses a symbol, (it proves that) he gets it'* would necessarily denote understanding rather than '...he then gets that thing (as a reward)')...this is sort of what I was driving at in the last para of my OP.

Hmm, do (or should) I, 'as a native speaker...have some sort of authoritative voice on the matter'? That's a question that's often lurking, and sometimes outright asked, on this very forum!

Personally, the part of the sentence that rubs my ear the wrong way is "that thing". Why not "it"?

As the fuller context above makes somewhat clearer, 'that thing' is a better substitute for 'the thing symbolized i.e. that the symbol symbolizes/stands for' (LOL) than 'it' would be (at least for the students).

Actually, I haven't read any detailed or first-hand accounts of the research done with Kanzi, and don't recall much of what little I might have once read, so I don't really know if the whole text (beyond what, as I've said, certainly appears to be a mistake/mistranslation of an item) is characterizing things correctly...but it sort of sounds a bit Skinnerish, don't you think?

*Then there's the "sports commentary" sort of talk: He kicks, he scores!/He presses, he gets it!

[jotham]

Is this [sprachgefuhl] an American usage? Just curious.

No, I think you can use it as well. I learned it last year and it seemed such a useful word in my work. It's a handy word to pull out when our non-native writers insist that knowledge of all the rules and doing math equations is all that's required to write or teach good English. I also like the word euphony in a similar vein.

Actually, I haven't read any detailed or first-hand accounts of the research done with Kanzi, and don't recall much of what little I might have once read, so I don't really know if the whole text (beyond what, as I've said, certainly appears to be a mistake/mistranslation of an item) is characterizing things correctly...but it sort of sounds a bit Skinnerish, don't you think?

Yeah, you may be right. If he presses one button, he figures out that he gets food, just like a rat figures out what lever to press or which passageway to run through. Use of a keyboard in place of a system of levers to get food doesn't automatically make it communication just because humans use keyboards to communicate.

[fluffyhamster]

I seem to recall some of Kanzi's output being only slightly better formed than mine: 'banana me banana want me banana me want me banana banana' (or something similarly thought-provoking).

[jotham]

You heard about the two or three female workers who sued the insitute where Koko was? They were told to flash in front of Koko whenever he "communicated" this in order to satisfy some animal instinct as occurs in the wild. They were sacked for refusing, they alleged, and later settled out of court.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4280961.stm

[fluffyhamster]

Hmm. Maybe the stuff I'd read before was about Koko instead? Yes, that was it: nipples me nipples want me nipples me want me nipples nipples.

Actually it would be very informative if someone could describe the ASL for 'nipples'.

[metal56]

Actually it would be very informative if someone could describe the ASL for 'nipples'.

http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm

[fluffyhamster]

Wow, I can see how that sign would perk a gorilla up.