Customer Reviews

Aping Language (Themes in the Social Sciences)

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I would hasten to say that even for those outside of the ape-language arena, Dr. Wallman's work represents an engaging introduction to a perennially important field. Before reading his stellar review of the recent attempts to impart language to apes, I could have only imagined the significance of the Sarah Project. This is a review that speaks to both common readers and linguistic experts without compromising the thorough breadth of experience and cutting analysis that academia has come to expect from the Wallman name. This opus stands as evidence of a lost art, a type of scholarship that is nigh impossible to discover in today's centres of learning. I believe 'Aping Language' should inch its way to the professional and personal libraries of those students of learning who value their literacy as much as the essence of their humanity.

I've used this book to base presentations on ape-language research at university seminars. Having read every work that I that know of that partians to the subject, I believe there quite simply is no more comprehensive review of the research in one single book. One who is interested in the evolutionary origins of language will be offered an excellent start by reading Wallman's chapter on the history of the ape-language controversy. The rest of your investigation will unfold from there. Overall, I would highly recommend this work to anyone whom seeks to achieve a foothold in the literiture.

Everybody "knows" that apes can talk; it's a "fact" at the base of a great deal of popular media and liberal arts science on the subject of how humanlike nonhumans are. People who regard homo sapiens as somehow unique are regularly battered by the overwhelming impression generated in the last generation that language, long held the most species-specific behavior of man, was approximated, at least in experiments, by chimps or gorillas.
Wallman explodes this myth by scientifically scrutinizing the research conducted on apes and by clearly distinguishing the features of human language from the mode of communication exhibited by the former. Primatologists have simply not done their ethological observations well, and have apparently neglected sound linguistic studies altogether. One wonders that the insatiable need of academics for grants and iconoclastic prestige hasn't infected their primatological findings. Wallman deserves to be compulsory reading in an introductory class on animal ethology, primatology, philosophy of science, liguistics and physical anthropology.

The author states in the Introduction to this 1992 book, "This book is about the experiments carried out over the past two decades in which it was attempted to impart a language, either natural or invented, to an ape. The debate engendered by these projects has been of interest---consuming for some, passing for others---to all of those whose concerns include the enduring questions of human nature, among them anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, and philosophers." He adds later, "it may be worth noting that the potential personal rewards of the ape projects have been substantial and emotional commitment commensurately high---the first person or team to give language to another species would certainly attain scientific immortality."

He observes, "The color coding of Lana's lexigrams according to semantic category undercuts the presumption that each of her lexigrams had a distinct meaning for her.... she might have learned merely a finite number of color sequences that reliably resulted in reward." (pg. 33)

He also comments, "(S)ome 50 percent of Nim's utterances were begun while his teacher was still signing, suggesting that he was not conversing but rather producing signs in a constant effort to secure desired objects or activities." (pg. 87)

Wallman's conclusion is, "I do not believe that any of the ape-language projects succeeded in instilling even a degenerate version of a human language in an ape.... The problem, it seems, lies with the students, not their teachers... What appears to be the case is that the ape is competent in some or all of the collateral areas but devoid of a language faculty." (Pg. 109-112)