If she learns cat and cats, and dog and dogs, and then learns the word parrot, she will not be able to form the plural parrots as children do by the age of three; nor can a parrot form an unlimited set of utterances from a finite set of units, or understand utterances never heard before. Reports of an African gray parrot named Alex suggest that new methods. of training animals may result in more learning than was previously believed possible. When the trainer uses words in context, Alex seems to relate some sounds with there meanings. This is more than simple imitation, but it is not how children acquire the complexities of the grammar of any language. It is more like a dog learning to associate certain sounds with meanings, such as heel, sit. fetch and so on. Indeed, a recent study in Germany reports on a nine-year-old border collie named Rico who has acquired a 200-word vocabulary