It can be a lengthy fire-burning ceremony offering sacrifices to ensure good luck the coming season or it can be a simple, thoughtful utterance in thanks for a meal.
Gordon's response was a thoughtful, well-reasoned utterance of the word, "What?" Holland's Got Talent, just like it's American incarnation, seems to be a revolving-door freak show where most of the pleasure is derived from watching rich people shamelessly mock eccentrics.
Skeptics insisted that Washoe and subsequent primate research subjects were not using language in the thoughtful, abstract, spontaneous way humans do, that their utterances were all merely rote, reward-based responses.
Both these books form a fitting tribute to a body of work whose pure clarity of utterance, 91 years after the death of its begetter, still pulses with feeling, thoughtful life.
Yet the film's thoughtful exactness finally lacks life – which is why you so appreciate DiCaprio's petulance, and the stormy abrasiveness offered by Michael Shannon, as Mrs Givings' mentally disturbed son, cutting through the crap with every utterance.
"Responsible, thoughtful".
