Why chimpanzees can't learn language and only humans can
In the 1970s the behavioural psychologist Herbert S. Terrace led an experiment to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use language. A young ape named 'Nim' was raised by a family in New York and instructed in American Sign Language. Initially, Terrace thought that Nim could create sentences but later discovered that Nim's teachers inadvertently cued his signing. Terrace concluded that the project had failed not only because Nim couldn't create sentences, but because he couldn't even learn words.
In this book, Terrace revisits 'Project Nim' to offer a novel view of the origins of human language.
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