Word: nims
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This dialogue between Laura and her charge might not seem unusual, except for one thing: the pupil was not a human child but a young chimpanzee named Nim. Like several others of his primate kin, Nim had been taught to communicate with humans in American Sign Language, a system of hand gestures developed for the deaf.* He eventually learned to make and recognize 125 signs. But the frisky little chimp and other apes who have received such "language" instruction are now the center of a raging academic storm. The issue: can apes really master the essence of human language...
...done more to stir doubts than Columbia University Psychologist Herbert Terrace in his work with little Nim (full name: Nim Chimpsky, a play on the name of Linguist Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a staunch proponent of the idea that language ability is biologically unique to humans). The object of Terrace's experiment was to prove Chomsky wrong -to show that creatures other than man could, indeed, conquer syntax and link words into sentences, however simple...
Toward that goal, Terrace, with Laura Petitto, a student assistant, and other trainers, put Nim through 44 months of intensive sign-language drill, while treating him much as they would a child. In some ways the chimp was an apt student, learning, for example, to "sign" dirty when he wanted to use the potty or drink when he spotted someone sipping from a Thermos. Nonetheless, Nim never mastered even the rudiments of grammar or sentence construction. His speech, unlike that of children, did not grow in complexity. Nor did it show much spontaneity; 88% of the time he "talked" only...
Armed with his new insights, Terrace began reviewing the reports and video tapes of other experimenters. Careful study of the record showed the same patterns with other apes that Terrace had noted in the work with Nim. There were rarely any "spontaneous" utterances, and what had seemed at first glance to be original sentences now emerged as responses to questions, imitations of signs made by the teacher, or as rote-like repetitions of memorized combinations. For instance, when Lana, a chimp at Yerkes, said Pleas machine give apple, the first three words seemed to mean nothing more to her than...
...Operation. Not until the final stages of the rescue operation would the Cambodians themselves offer an explanation, and it was most implausible. In a radio broadcast, Information Minister Hou Nim insisted that the Mayaguez was part of a CIA spy operation. Both the U.S. and the ship's owners have denied the charge...