=?windows-1252?Q?=91Project_Nim=2C=92_?=About a Chimpanzee Subjected to Research - Review - NYTimes.com

[Jocelyn Limpert]

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/movies/project-nim-about-a-chimpanzee-subjected-to-research-review.html?hpw

quote:

It is a bit curious that Mr. Marsh’s film has nothing to say about the roots
of Nim’s name, a jab at the influential linguist Noam
Chomsky<http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19720629.htm>,
whose theories about the innateness and uniqueness of language to humans
were the implicit target of Dr. Terrace’s work. His project was an effort to
discern if a chimpanzee could learn sign language and if that learning could
proceed beyond the mimicry of specific gestures into the creation of
grammatical sentences. If Nim could be raised more or less as a human child,
and could master human communication, that would challenge the Chomskyan
idea of language as a special, hard-wired trait fundamentally separating us
from other animals. (Koko <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmuu8UEi2ko> the
gorilla, another celebrated signing ape born around the same time as Nim,
also tested this hypothesis.)

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