Monkey grammar

[Jonathan Lighter]

Though admittedly not sure why, I do think this discovery is extremely
significant.

JL

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dennis Baron <debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU>
> Subject:      Monkey grammar
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> There's a new post on the Web of Language:
>
> Monkey grammar
>
> A team of Harvard psychologists has proved that monkeys can tell the =20
> difference between a banana and a nabama.
>
>  Well, maybe not exactly banana and nabama. After all, monkeys can=92t =20=
>
> talk. Even though a few chimps learned to sign, they=92re hopeless at =20=
>
> grammar and possess nothing even remotely resembling human language. =20
> Plus, three-syllable banana is a pretty long word for any primate. But =20=
>
> 14 tamarins did notice when researchers switched the order of the =20
> sounds in a series of two-syllable nonsense words.
>
> Find out the significance of this research --- read the rest of the =20
> post on the Web of Language:  http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
>
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> Department of English
> University of Illinois
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> read the Web of Language:
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
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