Obituary: Nim Chimpsky (1973-2000)

Grice said he admired only two people in the world:

Willard van Orman Quine

and

Chomsky.

"Even if I'd rather be seen dead than agreeing with some of the stupidities they have been reported to have said."

---

"Nim Chimpsky was born on November 19, 1973, and died on March 10, 2000."

"Chimpsy was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition (codenamed 6.001) at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace."

""We thought '6.001' was a cooler name", Professor Terrace said (interviewed telephonically).

"The validity of the study of the life (and 'opinions') of Chimsky is disputed, as Terrace argued that all ape-language studies, including Project Nim, were based on misinformation from the chimps -- and Chimpsky in particular."

"R. Allen and Beatrix Gardner made a similar study, called Project Washoe, in which another chimpanzee was raised like a human child."

"We bought a copy of "Studies in the Way of Words" for him; but can't say he made much use of it", they regret".

"Washoe and Chimpsky were given affection and participated in everyday social activity with her adoptive family."

The Grices.

"Their ability to communicate was far more developed than some children"" she reported.

"They lived 24 hours a day with their human families from birth."

"On the other hand, her cousin, "Nim" had spent his first 10 months in a research laboratory prior to being moved to a language study."

"We can hardly say 'Nim' was 'human' in THAT sense".

"But both chimps could use fragments of American Sign Language to make themselves understood."

To anyone who cares to listen.

"Chimpsky was given his name as a pun on Noam Chomsky."

A _bad_, irreverent pun. "We thought of calling him Blimfield, after Bloomfield, but declined"

"Chomsky was perhaps the foremost theorist of human language structure and generative grammar at the time, who held that humans were "wired" to develop language.[1]"

----- He included his children in that 'class'"

"Project NimProject Nim was an attempt to go further than Project Washoe."

"Terrace and his colleagues aimed to use more rigorous experimental techniques, and the intellectual discipline of the experimental analysis of behavior, so that the linguistic abilities of the apes could be put on a more secure footing."

"Roger Fouts wrote as follows."

"Since 98.7% of the DNA in humans

and chimps is identical, some

scientists (but NOT Noam Chomsky) believed

that a chimp raised in a human -- or at least, American -- family,

and using ASL (American Sign Language), would shed light on the way language is acquired and used by humans."

"We failed".

"Project Nim, headed by behavioral psychologist Herbert Terrace at Columbia University, was conceived in the early 1970s as a challenge to Chomsky's thesis that only humans have language."[2]

---- It ended up being a refutation of Columbia [spelled 'Colombia' by Nim].

"Attention was particularly focused on Nim's ability to make different responses to different sequences of signs and to emit different sequences in order to communicate different meanings."

"We aimed at reaching Grice's discussion of 'figures of speech' but fell short after 'meiosis'"

"However, the results, according to Fouts, were not as impressive as had been reported from the Washoe project."

"Of course, that was the time of the 1966 Kennedy assessination, and perhaps that contributed to our project not having been so impressive."

"Terrace, however, was skeptical of Project Washoe and, according to the critics, went to great lengths to discredit it."

"While Chimpsky did learn 125 signs, Terrace concluded that he hadn't acquired anything the researchers were prepared to designate worthy of the name "language" (as defined by Noam Chomsky -- and Grice)."

"Although Chimpsky had learned to repeat his trainers' signs in appropriate contexts -- we wouldn't call that 'language' in Grice's sense" (Grice, "Reply to Richards").

"Language is defined as a "doubly articulated" system, in which signs are formed for objects and states and then combined syntactically, in ways that determine how their meanings will be understood."

Vide Grice's myth -- discussed by Bar-On, Green, Wharton, and many others. Also by Grice, "Meaning Revisited". Pay attention to intricacies of the LAST (or latest) stage of 'evolution': semantic freedom and learnability.

Take an example,

The structured utterance:

---- dog bites man

versus

----- man bites dog.

"These two utterances use the same set of words but because of their ordering will be understood by speakers of English as denoting very different meanings."

Only the second can be a headline.

"For one thing, they say, there's no syntax – a basic requirement of language."

Cfr. Palmer, introduction to Grammar -- quoting from cartoon in Daily Telegraph:

One caveman to the other: "Remember when all we had to care about was nouns and verbs?"

"Without combining words and then being able to switch combinations to change meaning, goes the argument, what animals use is more like a code than a language."[3]

A pseudo-code as Kramer, me, and Wharton would call it.

Wharton has argued that 'code' is misused. We do speak of the "DNA code" and the "Hamurabi" code. "Different animals," Wharton would/did say.

"One of Terrace's colleagues, Laura-Ann Petitto, estimated that with more standard criteria Chimpsky's true vocabulary count was closer to 25 than 125."

""But then," she added, "my baby only spoke 6 words during the first stage of HER development."

"However, other students -- and some professors -- who cared for Chimpsky longer than Petitto disagreed with her and with the way that Terrace conducted his experiment."

"Possibly Chimpsky also disagreed, but if he did, he never said it."

"Critics assert that Terrace used his analysis to destroy the movement of ape-language research."

"Others argued that he aimed at destroying other people's patience".

"Terrace argued that none of the chimps were using language, because they could learn signs but could not form them syntactically as language, as described above."

"Plus, their accents sucked."

"Elizabeth Hess's book, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human (Bantam) seems to argue against Terrace's project."

This is the sort of 'chimp literature' that Grice regretted not being too familiar with.

"One critic wrote as follows."

"Hess has written about animals and their advocates before (Lost and Found: Dogs, Cats, and Everyday Heroes at a Country Animal Shelter.)"

"She is clearly an animal lover, yet (with a few exceptions) she resists the temptation to demonize the humans in Chimpsky's life."[4]

"Terrace and his colleagues concluded that Chimpsky did not show any meaningful sequential behavior that rivaled human grammar."

---- "The grammarian remarks we addressed to him were utterly ignored."

"Chimpsky's use of language was strictly pragmatic, as a means of obtaining an outcome, unlike a human child's, which can serve to generate or express meanings, thoughts, or ideas."

--- such as

"Feed me!"

-- discussed by Green/Bar-On.

"A child can be very expressive. Especially at night."

----

"There was nothing Chimpsky could be taught that could not equally well be taught to a pigeon using the principles of operant conditioning."

-- "Although Chimpsky, if we must give credit where credit is due, was _cleaner_."

"The researchers therefore questioned claims made on behalf of Washoe, and argued that the apparently impressive results may have amounted to nothing more than a "Clever Hans" effect, not to mention a relatively informal experimental approach."

Wharton referred to this as

"A horse said 'nay'"

----

"Critics of primate linguistic studies include Thomas Sebeok, American semiotician and investigator of nonhuman communication systems."

Sebeok writes:

"In my opinion, the alleged language experiments with apes divide into three groups."

"There's one, outright fraud."

"There's two, self-deception."

"There's three, those conducted by Terrace."

"The largest class by far is the middle one.[5]

"Sebeok also made pointed comparisons of Chimpsky, Washoe with Clever Hans."

"Some evolutionary psychologists, in effect agreeing with Chomsky -- if not Chimpsky --, argue that the apparent impossibility of teaching language to animals is indicative that the ability to use language is an innately human development.[6]"

--- "But future didactic methodologies may remedy that".

"Documentary Films."

"In production - A Discovery Productions documentary examining the controversy over the Chimpsky study, examining if this was the case of an ape learning sign language or purely imitation."

"A BBC Films/ James Marsh documentary opened the 2011 Sundance Film Festival."

"Terrace's skeptical approach to the claims that chimpanzees could learn and understand sign language led to heated disputes with Allen and Beatrice Gardner, who initiated the Washoe Project."

"The Gardners argued that Terrace's approach to training, and the use of many different assistants, did not harness the chimpanzee's full cognitive and linguistic resources."

"This makes some sense, as it is a common opinion among professional educators that intellectual development does not blossom in an environment bereft of intimate emotional bonds and stability."

"The hypothetical often cited is to imagine a human child raised in a laboratory with no strong parental bonds being offered snacks as rewards for speaking. It is unlikely, in such an environment, that a child would possess strong communication skills."

"This is the type of environment Chimpsky was in when the test was conducted."

"Roger Fouts, of the Washoe Project, also claims that Project Nim was poorly conducted because it didn't use strong enough methodology to avoid such comparisons and efficiently defend against them."

"Fouts also shares the Gardners' view that the process of acquiring language skills through natural social interactions gives substantially better results than behavioral conditioning."

"Fouts argues, based on his own experiments, that pure conditioning can lead to the use of language as a method mainly to get rewards rather than to raising communication abilities."

"Fouts later reported, however, that a community of ASL-speaking chimpanzees (including Chimpsky and Washoe themselves) was spontaneously using this language as a part of their internal communication system."

"They have even directly taught ASL signs to their children (Loulis) without human help or intervention."

"This means that not only can they use the language but that it has become a significant part of their lives.[7]"

-- a form of life, Witters would pedantically put it. Cfr. Lionspeak.

"The controversy is still not fully resolved, in part because the financial and other costs of carrying out language-training experiments with apes make replication studies difficult to mount."

"The definitions of both "language" and "imitation" -- and "Gricean" -- and the question of how language-like Chimpsky's performance was, will remain controversial."

The last days of Chimpsky:

"After his owners were reportedly going to sell Chimpsky to a research lab, public involvement funded Chimpsky's retirement to the Black Beauty Ranch, operated by The Fund for Animals, the group led by Cleveland Amory, in Texas."

"For all those who care to know, we report, sadly that Chimpsky died at the age of 26 from a heart attack."

---

Chimpsky's 'opinions':

Apple me eat

Banana Nim eat

Banana me eat

Drink me Nim

Eat Nim eat

Eat Nim me

Eat snot, mmmmm.

Eat me Nim

Eat me eat

Finish hug Nim

Give me eat

Grape eat Nim

Hug me Nim

Me Nim eat

Me more eat

More eat Nim

Nut Nim nut

Play me Nim

Tickle me Nim

Tickle me eat

Yogurt Nim eat

----- Banana Nim banana Nim

Banana eat me Nim

Banana me Nim me

Banana me eat banana

Drink Nim drink Nim

Drink eat drink eat

Drink eat me Nim

Eat Nim eat Nim

Eat drink eat drink

Eat grape eat Nim

Eat me Nim drink

Grape eat Nim eat

Grape eat me Nim

Me Nim eat me

Me eat drink more

Me eat me eat

Me gum me gum

Nim eat Nim eat

Play me Nim play

Tickle me Nim play

Longest recorded quotation

H.S. Terrace, in his article "How Chimpsky Changed My Mind", quotes Chimpsky's longest sentence as the 16-word-long that follows."

give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you.

--- cfr. Allott on Cummings


See also

Ape language
Generative grammar (Chomsky, Chimpsky)

Koko

Kanzi

Panzee and Panbanisha

Washoe


----
REFERENCES

Gregory Radick,

The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language, University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 320.

Independent Reader: A chimp named Nim

^ Beasts of banter, The Columbus Dispatch, March 16, 2008

^ What 'Nim Chimpsky' taught them all, The Christian Science Monitor, March 11, 2008

^ Wade, 1980

^ Pinker & Bloom, 1990

^ Fouts, Roger. 1991.

Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees

^ Terrace, H.S., Petitto, L.A., Sanders, R.J., Bever, T.G. (1979).

Can an ape create a sentence?

Science, 206(4421):891-902.

Seidenberg, M.S. and Pettito, L.A. (1979).

Signing behavior in apes: A critical review.

Cognition 7: 177-215.

Terrace, H. S. (1979). Nim. New York: Knopf.

Pinker, S., & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.

Wade, N. (1980).

Does man alone have language?
Apes reply in riddles, and a horse says neigh. Science, 208, 1349-1351.

Hess, E. (2008). Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. New York: Bantam.


Famous Monkeys Through History (also includes famous apes)

Fund for Animals

Who2

'Test' results

A Philosophical Critical Analysis of Recent Ape-Language Studies
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky"

Categories: Apes from language studies | 1973 animal births | 2000 animal deaths | Famous chimpanzees

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