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.

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.

In this volume, the Gardners and their co-workers explore the continuity between human behavior and the rest of animal behavior and find no barriers to be broken, no chasms to be bridged, only unknown territory to be charted and fresh discoveries to be made. With the beginning of Project Washoe in 1966, sign language studies of chimpanzees opened up a new field of scientific inquiry by providing a new tool for looking at the nature of language and intelligence and the relation between human and nonhuman intelligence. Here, the pioneers in this field review the unique procedures that they developed and the extensive body of evidence accumulated over the years. This close look at what the chimpanzees have actually done and said under rigorous laboratory conditions is the best answer to the heated controversies that have been generated by this line of research among ethologists, psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, and philosophers.

An absorbing investigation of chimpanzee language and communication by a young primatologist While working as a zookeeper with a group of semi-wild chimpanzees living on an island, primatologist Andrew Halloran witnessed an event that would cause him to become fascinated with how chimpanzees communicate complex information and ideas to one another. The group he was working with was in the middle of a yearlong power battle in which the older chimpanzees were being ousted in favor of a younger group. One day Andrew carelessly forgot to secure his rowboat at the mainland and looked up to see it floating over to the chimp island. In an orchestrated fashion, five ousted members of the chimp group quietly came from different parts of the island and boarded the boat. Without confusion, they sat in two perfect rows of two, with Higgy, the deposed alpha male, at the back, propelling and steering the boat to shore. The incident occurred without screams or disorder and appeared to have been preplanned and communicated. Since this event, Andrew has extensively studied primate communication and, in particular, how this group of chimpanzees naturally communicated. What he found is that chimpanzees use a set of vocalizations every bit as complex as human language. The Song of the Ape traces the individual histories of each of the five chimpanzees on the boat, some of whom came to the zoo after being wild-caught chimps raised as pets, circus performers, and lab chimps, and examines how these histories led to the common lexicon of the group. Interspersed with these histories, the book details the long history of scientists attempting (and failing) to train apes to use human grammar and language, using the well-known and controversial examples of Koko the gorilla, Kanzi the bonobo, and Nim Chimsky the chimpanzee, all of whom supposedly were able to communicate with their human caretakers using sign language. Ultimately, the book shows that while laboratories try in vain to teach human grammar to a chimpanzee, there is a living lexicon being passed down through the generations of each chimpanzee group in the wild. Halloran demonstrates what that lexicon looks like with twenty-five phrases he recorded, isolated, and interpreted while working with the chimps, and concludes that what is occurring in nature is far more fascinating and miraculous than anything that can be created in a laboratory. The Song of the Ape is a lively, engaging, and personal account, with many moments of humor as well as the occasional heartbreak, and it will appeal to anyone who wants to listen in as our closest relatives converse.

The Cat learns about primates—from marmoset monkeys to silverback gorillas—in this latest addition to the Cat in the Hat's Learning Library series! Traveling in his open-air Chimpmobile, the Cat takes Nick and Sally to Africa, Asia, and Madagascar, where they meet a barrel full of "monkeys," including mandrills, marmosets, gorillas, gibbons, gallagos, tarsiers, tamarin, pottos, bonobos—you name it! Along the way they learn the basic characteristics of primates (among them hands that can grasp and forward-facing eyes); how to tell the difference between an ape and a monkey (most monkeys have tails; apes don't); and most amazingly—that people are primates, too! Fans of the hit PBS Kids show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! (which is based on the Cat in the Hat's Learning Library) will go bananas over this latest addition to the series!

From the Printz-Honor-winning author of Airborn comes an absorbing YA novel about a teen boy whose scientist parents take in a chimpanzee to be part of the family.For thirteen years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home Zan -- an eight-day-old chimpanzee. Ben's father, a renowned behavioral scientist, has uprooted the family to pursue his latest research project: a high-profile experiment to determine whether chimpanzees can acquire advanced language skills. Ben's parents tell him to treat Zan like a little brother. Ben reluctantly agrees. At least now he's not the only one his father's going to scrutinize.It isn't long before Ben is Zan's favorite, and Ben starts to see Zan as more

This edition presents the first complete English translation of N.N. Ladygina-Kohts' journal chronicling her pioneering work with the chimpanzee, Joni. The journal entries describe and compare the instincts, emotions, play, and habits of her son Rudy and Joni as each develops. First published in Moscow in 1935 as a memoir in the Darwin Museum Series, this edition has 120 photographs, 46 drawings and an introduction by Allen and Beatrix Gardner of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Nevada, as well as a Foreword and an Afterword by Lisa A. Parr, Signe Preuschoft, and Frans B. M. de Waal of the Living Links Center at Emory University.