 Nim Chimpsky in 1999. Photo by Bob Ingersoll | |
| Species | Chimpanzee |
|---|---|
| Sex | Male |
| Born | November 19, 1973 |
| Died | March 10, 2000 (aged 26) |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Named after | Noam Chomsky |
Neam "Nim" Chimpsky[1] (November 19, 1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee used in a study to determine whether chimps could learn a human language, American Sign Language (ASL). The project was led by Herbert S. Terrace of Columbia University with linguistic analysis by psycholinguist Thomas Bever. Chimpsky was named as a pun on linguist Noam Chomsky, who posited that humans are "wired" to develop language.[2]
Over the course of Project Nim, the infant chimp was shuttled between locations and a revolving group of roughly 60 caregivers, including teenagers and grad students, few of whom were proficient in sign language.[3][4][5] Four years into the project, Nim became too difficult to manage and was returned to the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma.[6]
After reviewing the results, Terrace concluded that Nim mimicked signs from his teachers in order to get a reward. Terrace argued that Nim did not initiate conversation or create sentences. Terrace said that he had not noticed this throughout the duration of the study but only upon reviewing video tape.[7][8][1] Terrace ultimately became a popularly cited critic of ape language studies.[9]
- ^ a b Terrace, Herbert; Petitto, L. A.; Sanders, R. J.; Bever, T. G. (November 23, 1979). "Can an ape create a sentence" (PDF). Science. 206 (4421): 891–902. Bibcode:1979Sci...206..891T. doi:10.1126/science.504995. PMID 504995. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 22, 2012. Retrieved November 2, 2011.
However objective analysis of our data, as well as those obtained by other studies, yielded no evidence of an ape's ability to use a grammar.
- ^ Radick, Gregory (2007). The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language. University of Chicago Press. p. 320.
- ^ "The Chimp That Learned Sign Language". NPR.org.
- ^ See chapters 3 and 4 in Hess, E. (2008)
- ^ Marx, J. (1980) p. 1331
- ^ Marsh, J. (2011). Project Nim documentary. Metacritic
- ^ Terrace, Herbert. "Project Nim — The Untold Story" (PDF). appstate.edu.
- ^ Chomsky, Noam (2007–2008). "On the Myth of Ape Language" (e-mail correspondence). Interviewed by Matt Aames Cucchiaro. Retrieved February 13, 2021 – via chomsky.info.
- ^ Terrace, Herbert S. (2019). Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can. Columbia University Press.