{"id":24,"date":"2015-03-11T13:02:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T12:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2015-04-27T22:56:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T20:56:50","slug":"the-story-of-nim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/the-story-of-nim\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of Nim"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 10 marked the 15th anniversary of the death of a famous American whose life was devoted to advancing our knowledge about language. He was, unfortunately, a controversial individual prone<\/span> to drug use and violent outbursts<\/span>, and wound up<\/span> spending most of his life behind bars<\/span>.<\/p>\n

He also liked bananas.<\/p>\n

I’m talking, of course, about Nim Chimpsky<\/b> (1973\u20132000), the second chimpanzee to be taught sign language<\/span>. He is the subject of a fascinating and beautifully written biography, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human<\/i> by Elizabeth Hess. In 2011, the book was made into an award-winning British film called Project Nim<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Nim was the second chimpanzee to be taught sign language<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Nim’s name was meant to recall American linguist Noam Chomsky, who had said, basically, that humans can speak and animals cannot. The “project” aimed to use Chimpsky to prove Chomsky wrong. The hope was that by being raised from birth and thus being exposed longer to human culture, Nim would outdo his predecessor, a wild chimp named Washoe, who had acquired a 350-word vocabulary in American Sign Language (ASL).<\/p>\n

Under the direction of Herbert Terrace at Columbia University, Nim spent his first year in a home on New York City’s Upper West Side. His adoptive mother, Stephanie LaFarge, clothed him in diapers<\/span> and raised him as one of her children. She taught him to make the signs for basic words \u2014 but the learning environment was very unstructured, and the documentation of Nim’s progress almost nonexistent.<\/p>\n