Who was Nim Chimpsky and what did he contribute to our understanding of language?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A less positive view of the linguistic capabilities of chimpanzees was taken by Herbert Terrace, who raised a chimp named Nim Chimpsky, a takeoff on Noam Chomsky, the eminent linguist. Over the course of several years, Nim made more than 19,000 multiple-sign utterances in a slightly modified version of American Sign Language. Most of his utterances consisted of two-word combinations. Terrace's careful analysis of these utterances, however, revealed that most of them were repetitions of what Nim had seen. Terrace concluded that, despite what appeared to be impressive accomplishments, Nim did not show even the rudiments of syntactical expression. The chimp could produce single- or even multiple-word utterances, but not in a syntactically organized way. For example, Nim would alternate signing, "Give Nim banana," "Banana give Nim," and "Banana Nim give," showing no preference for the grammatically correct form. Moreover, Terrace also studied films showing other chimpanzees supposedly producing language. He came to the same conclusion for them that he had reached for Nim. His position, then, is that although chimpanzees can understand and produce utterances, they do not have linguistic competence in the same sense that even very young humans do. Their communications lack structure, and particularly multiplicity of structure. At this point, we just cannot be sure whether chimps truly show the full range of language abilities.