Lexical creation by signing apes

[Celso Álvarez Cáccamo]

David,

At 12:37 2001-05-14 -0400, David Samuels wrote:
>Celso,
>
>Is that "A Conversation With Koko"? I get these PBS ape videos confused,
>but I think there is clearly speech and signing going on between the
>researchers and the gorillas, so a recognition of a sonic homophony, or
>indeed even a confusion, is entirely possible.

Yes, that must be it. I watched the Spanish-dubbed version ("Conversaciones
con Koko"), broadcast by public (well, government-private ;-) TV.

I wouldn't called it a confusion. If the facts were like the researchers
narrate them, Koko obviously generalized from sound to visual sign to
designate another referent, which is quite an achievement. That's the
principle of orthographic writing.

>If it's the video I'm thinking of, the section on Michael's memory is
>really interesting; and the part where they interview the art gallery
>owner who represents the gorilla's paintings is like ten of the wackiest
>moments of public television ever.

Yes, there's a section on Michael's (a male gorilla) "recounting" how her
mother was slaughtered in Africa when he was a baby... gorilla. According
to researchers,  to the question "What happened to your mother?" Michael
signed /noise - fear - cut throat/ , or something like that. I'm very
skeptical about this, though. This would entail displacement through
language and an extraordinary active memory about events in early infancy,
which even humans don't have -- we need expensive Lacanian psychoanalists
to retrieve them.

I agree, some of Michael's paintings are extraordinary, with an incredible
aesthetic sense of colour and form combination. Almost abstract
expressionism. Apparently Michael would paint and once finished we would
title the piece, for example "More Flowers for Gorillas".

In contrast, the part about Koko "selecting" a mate through a video
catalogue of male gorillas, though, is almost hilarious.

Celso Álvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz at udc.es
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/