C_S_D 3020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Nim Chimpsky, American Sign Language
10 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
Can animals learn language: communication systems language, true language must have productivity and displacement. Productivity = we can produce and understand an infinite number of messages that we have never said or heard before. Displacement = ability to talk about things that are not present in time and space: primates are our closest relative. Many people have tried to teach them language. Primates can learn a large number of signs, but they don"t appear to combine them in novel grammatical utterances or to talk about a wide range of topics: nim chimpsky. Nim chimpsky was a chimpanzee raised from birth among humans and was taught american sign language from a young age. Children: true language appears to be species specific. Krentz & corina (2008): prelinguistic infants prefer to listen to speech sounds over non-speech sounds. If the bias is for language, then a hearing speech- exposed infant should prefer to watch a input from a visual language over non-linguistic pantomime.
