Chimpanzee Who Knew Sign Language Dies

"Chimpanzee Who Knew Sign Language Dies" reflects on the life of a chimpanzee named Washoe, and announces her death. According to the article, by the time of her death, Washoe had accumulated a total of 250 words, and had taught what she knew of ASL to three younger chimps. Although there is disagree whether Washoe was actually "speaking" and "using language", most agree that work with Washoe has shed light onto the cognitive workings of the chimpanzee as well as brought "a message of respect for nature," said Dr. Mary Lee Jensvold, assistant director of the nonprofit institute that taught Washoe ASL.

Evidence that chimps really cannot develop human-like language stems from another study done a Columbia University on a chimp named Nil Chimpsky (as a play on Noam Chomsky’s name). They wished to replicate the Washoe experiment, under slightly more controlled conditions. Unfortunately, Nim was less successful at increasing his vocabulary: She only accumulated a total of 125 words, and "with a more standard criteria the true vocabulary count would be closer to 25 than 125". Furthermore, the longest utterance Nim produced was "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you" showing no knowledge of grammar. Some argued that the operant training techniques could be used on a pigeon and still generate the same results, offering the example of Clever Hans. Chomsky argues, "Humans can fly about 30 feet-that's what they do in the Olympics. Is that flying? The question is totally meaningless."

However, to give the Hannah Hironaka perspective on the issue, I would still argue that Washoe's ability to model words using hands and is still an incredible profound development. Although the chimp obviously not using language as humans do, her ability to associate meanings with actions, form ideas by combining words in new ways (Refrigerator was "Openfooddrink" and toilet was "dirtygood"), as well as subsequent teaching of the language to younger chimps demonstrates to me an incredible learning capacity. Also, it seems strange that they view this chimp example so closed mindedly. If I were feeling confrontational, I would offer Chomsky this analogy: Just because a dogs, cat's, chimp's, etc. emotions are much less complex than human emotions, and much less conscious, does that mean that they experience no emotion? Is a dog wagging its tale when it sees you NOT experiencing the emotion of happiness, just because the dog's understanding of happiness is much less complex than ours? Similarly, is a chimp's use of signs to communicate meaning and teach this knowledge to future generations, not noteworthy just because it is not as complex as humans ability to do so?

Chimpansee Who Knew Sign Language Dies:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hNtJe1ce99cEqe8NszC1xV6fpQQgD8SKGOVG0

Nim Chimpsky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky