Project Nim

I went to see the new film Project Nim with some other linguists last night. We knew there wouldn't be much linguistics in it, but still - we had to go and see a film about Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee famously named after Noam Chomsky. (The film sort of gave the impression that the chimp was named Nim from birth, and then didn't really make anything of the Chomsky connection. They were playing down the linguistics, but still. Unless he was really called Nim Chimpsky - that really would be an example of nominative determinism.)

***SPOILERS AFTER THE BREAK***

Orang utans can learn English in a few months

I'm sure this is just a case of very bad reporting. I'm sure that this scientist is not crazy. 


The link is to a Sarawak Star article about a Dr Francine Neago, who wants to set up a centre to teach language skills to orang utans. Nothing new here, no. But the article says things like "Dr Neago said it would take a few months for the orang utan to learn English", and "tests had proven that a primate could acquire sign language and phonetic spelling skills". She clearly doesn't mean that tests have shown that a primate can fully acquire language, as it then says "she taught a one-year-old orang utan named Bulan to express itself through the computer by learning to use up to 150 words", and 150 words is not 'sign language'. But this really is quite spectacularly sloppy reporting, even for a local paper. 

Learning about monkeys

Today I'm cracking on with this index I'm compiling for an edited volume (not my edited volume, one of the professors at university's). It's really slow going. I've got 40 hours to do, and I'm doing the easy ones first in order to maximise those 40 hours and get the most done I can. It took me a whole afternoon to do the 'learning' entry, with all its sub-entries, so now I'm focussing on the ones without sub-entries because with those you can basically just list all the pages they're on without having to read too much. There aren't that many of them though.

I'm learning quite a lot doing it, because for so many of the entries you do have to read the context. The volume is on language evolution, so there's a lot about early hominins, chimps, birdsong, stone tools, brain size, etc. etc.