I remember the first "sentence" my son put together: "want a yogurt". Up until then, he would identify items and ask for things by name, but hadn't really put words together in new combinations. One day, we drove past the yogurt shop and he yells out, "want a yogurt - want a yogurt!" It wasn't a command, it was a joyful request; so we got some yogurt.
The other day, one of my parrots, the Mitred Conure, Kilo Lani, surprised me a bit by combining words in a sentence. Before I go on, I will say that i don't know the science behind this - I just know what happened.
My wife starts whistling for the dog, and Kilo calls out, "Dog come here. Dog come here."
Now in the past, Kilo has said, "Come Here" to me and to the dog, and to others. He says, "What's the doggy say - woof woof!" He says, "Good Dog" when the dog lies down on command. But, he has never heard us say, "Dog come here." We might say, "Come Jack" or "Jack, Come here" or "Good Dog, Jack", but not "Dog come here".
It appears that Kilo put that together himself. He knows what the dog is. He knows what "come Here" means. He knows the specific whistle my wife uses to call the dog. He often tries to help us with the dog - I think he has decided that even though the dog is capable of specific queued behaviors, the dog isn't really as intelligent as a parrot and needs encouragement from all parties - by saying "Good Dog", or "Go to bed", or "Come here", or "Go back". This time, some how he decided "Dog, come here" would be most helpful.
I am trying not to draw conclusions, just observing behavior. Kilo combined words in a previously untaught manner in response to an unconditioned stimulus. And he continues to use the same phrase when my wife whistles for the dog.
