Kanzi's Primal Language, a New Book by Great Ape Trust Scientists, Details the
Emergence of Language in a Bonobo Chimpanzee
DES MOINES, Iowa, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- A new book authored by
scientists at Great Ape Trust of Iowa delivers additional insight into the
acquisition of language by the most famous bonobo chimpanzee in the world,
Kanzi. Kanzi's Primal Language: The Cultural Initiation of Primates into
Language was written by William Fields and Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh of Great
Ape Trust and Dr. Par Segerdahl of Uppsala University of Sweden.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051020/CGTH005 )
Kanzi's Primal Language offers important new knowledge into how culture
and language interlace in early childhood by showing how Kanzi originally
acquired language when he was a young ape -- spontaneously in a culture he
shared with humans.
"Kanzi's language acquisition overthrows the theoretical framework in
which people have tried to imagine what it means for a child to develop
language -- it is neither innate nor learned through training or imitation,"
says Fields. "Language is a spontaneous companion to how one tangibly lives
and serves as a reflection of the ideational system that emerges as an aspect
of cultural ontogeny and development. You don't teach the brain language any
more than you teach the brain to think."
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, Kanzi's Primal Language will help the
scientific community, and the general public, better understand the similarity
between humans and apes -- similarities that extend even to language.
"We should never think in limiting terms what anyone can do, whether it's
an ape or a human," says Fields. "If you provide apes every opportunity to
fully express themselves, and early enough in their lives, they will do things
you thought they wouldn't or couldn't do."
Fields began his scientific research with bonobos in 1998 at the Language
Research Center (LRC) at Georgia State University in Atlanta where he
developed a novel anthropological approach of ape language research. Fields
joined Great Ape Trust of Iowa in the spring of 2005, when a family of eight
bonobos, including Kanzi, was transferred there from the LRC. Great Ape Trust
is a world-class scientific research facility dedicated to understanding the
origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence in great apes.
Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work on the language capabilities of the bonobo
Kanzi has intrigued the world because of its far-reaching implications for
understanding the evolution of the human language. The first scientist doing
language research with bonobos, Savage-Rumbaugh joined Great Ape Trust
following a 23-year association with the LRC at Georgia State University.
At the LRC, Savage-Rumbaugh helped pioneer the use of a number of new
technologies for working with primates. These include a keyboard which
provides for speech synthesis, allowing the animals to communicate using
spoken English, and a "primate friendly" computer-based joystick terminal that
permits the automated presentation of many different computerized tasks.
Information developed at the center regarding the abilities of non-human
primates to acquire symbols, comprehend spoken words, decode syntactical
structures, learn concepts of number and quantity, and perform complex
perceptual-motor tasks has helped changed the way humans view other members of
the primate order.
Savage-Rumbaugh's work with Kanzi was detailed in Language Comprehension
in Ape and Child published in Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development (1993). It was selected by the "Millennium Project" as one of the
top 100 most influential works in cognitive science in the 20th century by the
University of Minnesota Center for Cognitive Sciences in 1991. Dr.
Savage-Rumbaugh's work is also featured in Apes, Language and the Human Mind
(Oxford Press, 1996) and Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (John
Wiley & Sons, 1995).
Par Segerdahl is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for
Bioethics at the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden. He
has published several philosophical inquiries into language in British and
American journals, and in his book Language Use (1996). He currently leads a
research project studying the concept of natural behavior in domestic animals.
Great Ape Trust of Iowa is located five miles southeast of downtown Des
Moines on 230 acres of lowlands, riverine forest and lakes. When completed,
Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and
one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape -- bonobos,
chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans -- for noninvasive interdisciplinary
studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life
for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing
conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about
great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization
and is certified by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). To learn
more about Great Ape Trust of Iowa, go to http://www.GreatApeTrust.org .
SOURCE Great Ape Trust of Iowa
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Related links:
http://www.GreatApeTrust.org
Photo Notes:
NewsCom:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051020/CGTH005
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org AP PhotoExpress
Network: PRN3 PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
CONTACT:
Al Setka, Director of Communications of Great
Ape Trust of Iowa, +1-515-243-3580, or mobile, +1-515-720-7430,
or asetka@greatapetrust.org
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