Nim Chimpsky

Originally posted on my Friendster blog on 10 September 2006.

-----
just a little something which i thought was hilarious. as i read through the chapter on animal language in yule's introductory book 'the study of language,' i learned that there was once a chimpanzee named nim chimpsky who was taught sign language. nim chimpsky is, of course, a play on 'noam chomsky,' which happens to be the name of this great american linguist (who changed the course of modern linguistics with the publication of his tranformational-generative theory of language in the 1960s--haha). i wonder if chomsky knows about the existence of nim. probably not, since chomsky, who is not at all concerned with how language is used by humans, probably won't care about how it is used by chimps or if chimps have the capacity for it all. in fact, i believe chomsky also said that the language faculty is uniquely human, so, there, that definitely crosses nim out. poor chimp.

coming back to nim, he was actually able to learn and use sign language, but not to the extent that humans are able to employ it. this means he produces mostly short words and mainly for the purpose of getting rewards (now, isn't this the purpose for humans as well? haha). when he comes up with long structures, it is often a combination of the short words he has already acquired and without any expansion. in addition, he is unable to initiate communication; he just basically responds to those around him. nim is actually one of the many experiments that try to teach animals language. i think the most popular one is the experiment with the chimp called washoe. anyway, given the results of these experiments, it seems chomsky is right that indeed the language faculty is only for humans.

i know i should be getting more from my reading than chimps learning sign language and word plays like nim chimpsky. but this revision process is just so tedious that i guess i just take from it whatever i can. also, with terms and concepts such as [+ - voice] labio-dental fricatives and high, back vowels, phrase structure rules and tree diagrams, hyponymy and entailments, diglossia and speakers' choices, and linguistic variation and social stratification, nim chimpsky is a breath of fresh air. i'd like to think this is all going to stop once i'm done with my exam on thursday, but the thursday exam is actually just the first of a series. there's one more in november and another in december. yay! not.

but i guess i really just have to push myself and start looking at this in a different light. it's probably for my own good to go back to the basics anyway and learn about other things as well. i mean, the problem sometimes is, we go to the higher processes right away when there's still so much grounding that needs to be done in terms of the basic principles. for instance, critiquing chomky's tg when you don't even know what a phrase structure rule is, or doing critical discourse analysis when you can't even begin to explain what discourse means is hardly ideal. or sometimes, people get so specialized they begin to think only their own work matters. they fail to see the interesting things happening in other fields and the interconnections between what they and others are doing. and if these two don't work, i guess i can just always think that, in certain company, saying 'voiced alveo-palatal affricate' to refer to the initial sound in the word 'judge' can increase one's level of desirability (although i'm afraid to imagine what kind of company this is, haha).

alright, that's enough prompting for me in a day. i really should go back to my reading now. i just have to, in the words of the mighty tim gunn, 'carry on!'