Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-4hvwz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-01T07:21:52.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - History of the ape-language projects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2009

Get access

Summary

EARLY STUDIES

Before the Gardners' innovative attempt, described below, to inculcate a visual human language in a nonhuman primate, at least half a dozen projects had been undertaken with the aim of either actively conferring a spoken language on an ape or observing the possible “natural” acquisition of one within a human home environment. The linguistic results in each case were dismal.

Witmer (1909) reported on a chimpanzee that had been trained to approximate crudely the word “mama.” Furness (1916) succeeded, after much labor, in getting an orangutan to utter a discernible “papa” and “cup.” Hayes and Hayes (1951) attained the greatest success among these early projects; at the end of six and a half years of home-raising a chimpanzee, Viki, the Hayeses had managed to teach her to utter “papa,” “mama,” “cup,” and, less successfully, “up.” But Viki's articulation was poor and there was little evidence that these words served a referential, that is, symbolic, function for her.

On the other hand, the apes' “comprehension” of spoken words and phrases substantially exceeded their productive abilities. For example, Gua, a chimpanzee home-reared by the Kelloggs (1933), outpaced the Kelloggs' young son in the number of phrases to which she could respond correctly. This was true up to the end of the fourth month of the study, after which the boy surpassed Gua. Rather than positing understanding, Kellogg (1968) speaks of the chimpanzee “reacting correctly,” but he does not address the question of how much of this reacting could be attributed to linguistic decoding as distinguished from nonlinguistic cues and contextual information.

Type
Chapter
Information
Aping Language , pp. 10 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×