Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can


Book Description

In the 1970s, the behavioral psychologist Herbert S. Terrace led a remarkable experiment to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use language. A young ape, named “Nim Chimpsky” in a nod to the linguist whose theories Terrace challenged, was raised by a family in New York and instructed in American Sign Language. Initially, Terrace thought that Nim could create sentences but later discovered that Nim’s teachers inadvertently cued his signing. Terrace concluded that Project Nim failed—not because Nim couldn’t create sentences but because he couldn’t even learn words. Language is a uniquely human quality, and attempting to find it in animals is wishful thinking at best. The failure of Project Nim meant we were no closer to understanding where language comes from. In this book, Terrace revisits Project Nim to offer a novel view of the origins of human language. In contrast to both Noam Chomsky and his critics, Terrace contends that words, as much as grammar, are the cornerstones of language. Retracing human evolution and developmental psychology, he shows that nonverbal interaction is the foundation of infant language acquisition, leading up to a child’s first words. By placing words and conversation before grammar, we can, for the first time, account for the evolutionary basis of language. Terrace argues that this theory explains Nim’s inability to acquire words and, more broadly, the differences between human and animal communication. Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can is a masterful statement of the nature of language and what it means to be human.




Language Learning by a Chimpanzee


Book Description

Language Learning by a Chimpanzee: The Lana Project brings together several disciplinary endeavors, such as primatology, experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, computer and information sciences, and neurosciences. This book is composed of two sets of data—one relates to language learning in the chimpanzee, while the other deals with language construction by Homo sapiens. The fundamental issue of mind-brain dualism and difference between man and beast are also covered. This text mainly describes the LANA project that aims to develop a computer-based language training system for investigation into the possibility that chimpanzees may have the capacity to acquire human-type language. This publication is recommended for biologists, specialists, and researchers conducting work on language learning in nonhuman primates.




Apes, Language, and the Human Mind


Book Description

Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology.




Are Dolphins Really Smart?


Book Description

Justin Gregg weighs up the claims made about dolphin intelligence and separates scientific fact from fiction.




The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain


Book Description

"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.




The Truth about Language


Book Description

Background to the problem -- The Rubicon -- Language as miracle -- Language and natural selection -- The mental prerequisites -- Thinking without language -- Mind reading -- Stories -- Constructing language -- Hands on to language -- Finding voice -- How language is structured -- Over the Rubicon




Parrots Talk!


Book Description

Via rhyming text, an introduction to the habits and characteristics of the parrot.




The First Word


Book Description

An accessible exploration of a burgeoning new field: the incredible evolution of language The first popular book to recount the exciting, very recent developments in tracing the origins of language, The First Word is at the forefront of a controversial, compelling new field. Acclaimed science writer Christine Kenneally explains how a relatively small group of scientists that include Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker assembled the astounding narrative of how the fundamental process of evolution produced a linguistic ape-in other words, us. Infused with the wonder of discovery, this vital and engrossing book offers us all a better understanding of the story of humankind.




Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? Fifty Years After Alister Hardy - Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution


Book Description

The book starts from the observation that humans are very different from the other primates. Why are we naked? Why do we speak? Why do we walk upright? Fifty years ago, in 1960, marine biologist Sir Alister Hardy tried to answer this when he announced his so-called aquatic hypothesis: human ancestors did not live in dry savannahs as traditional anthropology assumes, but have adapted to live at the edge between land and water, gathering both terrestrial and aquatic foods. This eBook is an up-to-date collection of the views of the most important protagonists of this long-neglected theory of huma.




Nim Chimpsky


Book Description

Chronicles an experiment with a young chimpanzee who was brought up with a human family and taught to use sign language proficiently, until the funding for the study ended and he spent two decades shuttled in and out of various facilities.