Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp that Learned Sign Language

[Ichingcarpenter]

The name Nim Chimpsky was a twist on Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist who theorized that language as we know it is unique to humans. Terrace wanted to disprove Chomsky's theory and show that a chimpanzee could develop real language.

Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called "Project Nim."

Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was attempting to find out if a chimpanzee could learn to communicate using American Sign Language.

"Everyone knows that words are learned one at a time," but something happens when children begin to combine words and create true language, Terrace says.

The question, he says, was, "Could Nim do this?"

A newly released book takes a look at the project, and the people involved examine the ethics of the experiment.




http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90516132

[theoldman]

1. All animals have a language. It may be limited to a few words.

Just because we do not understand the words does not mean they do not have a language. It is not a written language, it is a vocal language just like our ancestors had.

[Indenturedebtor]

2. Yeah and one test subject doesn't prove/disprove anything

Besides how often were they speaking with Nim? Was it constant immersion as it is for human babies?

If you took a human baby and only spoke english to it for 30 minutes a day, it's language development wouldn't be very good.

Even chickens have a language ffs. I don't believe for one second that Chimps don't have language.

[semillama]

3. All animals do not have a language. All animals have a method of communication

There's a big difference.

[Occulus]

4. My cat has words for ideas

Differing sounds for "play", "feed me" or "clean my damn litter, lowly servant".

The odd thing is, the first one he vocalized- the cat-word for "play"- was in imitation to us asking him if he wanted to. If you're curious, his word for "play" sounds a bit like a cat barking.

He's a Maine Coon, though, so he's just chatty as hell in the first place.

[Igel]

6. Define "language".

Does it mean learning words (whether gestural or vocal or written) for things? For actions? Does it involve combining them in prescribed (or consistent) ways for routine situations? Novel situations? Does it involve recursion, or creating novel words or word combinations?

Chickens can learn words. It's called "conditioning". You can teach sentences to some animals--they can't reproduce them, but they learn them. But it's almost certain that they're learning them as very, very long words--or, rather, enough of the beginning to disambiguate between sentences.

Nim was supposed to have innovated word combinations for novel items, to have had syntax. These are typically considered requirements for "language". Recursion is a definite plus, as well. Showing that Nim could parrot, or learn words for things, would have been a null result. The early claims--claims repeated for all sorts of different primate species, and members of those species, to this day--is that they have syntax, they can innovate so they don't just have words for things but words for features that can be abstracted away from a given object or class of objects.

Thing is, when you look at the video, the uncut video, all the claims pretty much disintegrated. Vickie Fromkin had at one such example, I forget which primate it was. There was a video, 20 or 30 minutes, "proving" that the ape/chimp/etc. had language. Upon digging, there were 700 hours of video that those 20-30 minutes were culled from. They made the same gestures in meaningless contexts; they mimicked things they had seen, which their trainers had overlooked; their syntax varied so much as to be non-existent. Some people cried foul, and were offended that the primate would be so disparaged; they were ignored or belittled, since challenging a result in science is what makes it science.

The most recent claims are that they don't have *those* aspects of language, but discourse pragmatics--they're sensitive to the context in which things are said, intonation. Such claims are hard to disprove. But I'm sure somebody will, if they care.

As for Chomsky ... there's the Chomskybot! http://rubberducky.org/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl

[frogmarch]

5. Was Nim the chimp who

when someone, as a joke, gave him a sour "treat," responded in ASL, You green shit ?