Another problem implicit in the keyboard has to do with the fact that
apes social life is high-speed performance. They normally detect and
negotiate social events quicker than humans do. Using the slow
medium of keyboard-talk is therefore sometimes a frustrating affair for
them, especially when they talk with humans who are not skilled key-
board users. It is time-consuming to sort out misunderstandings and
repair mistakes, and sometimes communications are so slow that other
events take the attention away from what is laboriously being commu-
nicated. A clear advantage with the keyboard, however, is that it is easy
for non-members of the culture to perceive linguistic communication
in the apes behaviour. But those of us who understand bonobo speech
tend more and more to use the keyboard only when we are forced to.
Simply speaking is more efficient and in harmony with the rhythm and
social life in which we find it natural to negotiate the events of daily
life. When the keyboard does not tie together only two members at a
time, it becomes natural for the entire Pan/Homo group to talk. There
is, in conclusion, a pressure within the Pan/Homo culture towards vocal
speech.
p. 54 - on full language:
That linguistic creativity is a cultural rather than a grammatical trait
turns the edge of Wallmans (1992) and Pinkers (1994) critical remark
that the chimpanzees Nim and Washoe cannot possibly have learned
ASL, because ASL is a full language, and no ape has acquired a full lan-
guage. Their notion of full languages presupposes that languages exist
as grammatical systems. Not only does Kanzis language acquisition and
use speak against this picture, so does our human language acquisition
and use, if viewed closely.
Science, and Terrace
P 99-100
Let us summarize how we consider our work and its reception. We
have, in our research practices, carefully balanced the specialized sci-
entific techniques that we learned as university students against the
more general aspects of human life that we developed during childhood
immaturity. Counterproductive demands on what it means to do sci-
entific research and report results have made it almost impossible to
communicate what happened at the LRC (or in Project Nim, as we shall
see later in this chapter). Therefore, this unusual event has not been
allowed to work as a sufficient reason to change the way sciences such
as linguistics, psychology and biology understand their objects of study.
p. 149:
It is significant that Terrace was quite optimistic during the entire
project period, and noted daily linguistic interactions with Nim, but
decided that the project had failed only by the end of the last year, when
he was sitting in front of a TV-screen watching videotapes and writing
a scientific assessment of the project. We do not doubt that Nim tended
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to mirror the teachers signs, but are not surprised that he did so. That
was the main kind of practice with signs he was taught in the class-
room. The teacher invited Nim to make the same signs she made, often
by moulding Nims hands, and he was met with affection when he did
the same signs the teacher made. Repeating the teachers signs must
have been an important form of interaction for Nim, a way of being
together with humans and receiving their attention and affection. This
may not have been an impressive form of linguistic interaction, but Nim
used signing also outside of the classroom, in situations where he seems
to have had something to say. And the humans did not only invite Nim
to mirror their signs, they also used signs when they had something to
say to him. These freer interactions must have affected Nim and made
him familiar with at least some of the cultural practices in which human
children begin to speak. Perhaps Herb Terrace in this respect can be
compared with some of the sceptical caregivers who worked with Kanzi,
who talked with him and told us what he said, but questioned the lin-
guistic nature of these communications when they acted in another
culture than the one in which Kanzi just recently had spoken to them.
On underreporting and more on Terrace duality (idea vs impl)
p. 150-151:
Terraces original idea was not that he would teach Nim language in
a tiny classroom. He explicitly rejected the dissociation of language from
social context that characterized earlier ape language research:
My plan for teaching Nim to use sign language called for raising him
as a human child in a human family... I hoped that Nims motiva-
tion to sign would be similar to a childs motivation to talk: not just
to communicate his feelings and desires, but to please his family and
to share his perceptions of the world. (Terrace 1979: 5)
Terrace here expresses his intention to place an important component
of the project outside of the controlled sphere that he mastered as a
remarkably skilled experimental psychologist. He expresses his hunch
that in order to transfer language to Nim, he had to temporarily suspend
experimental psychology, and leave an essential part of the project to
what might hopefully happen between Nim and a few humans with
whom he would live. Terrace expresses the need to exercise epokhé in
Project Nim, also when describing vital aspects of the project:
Because of their subjective nature, important details of Nims social-
ization cannot be described properly in the objective terminology of
the method section of a scientific article. They require an under-
standing of the human setting of the experiment, of the people who
took part in it and the places in which they worked. They also require
some understanding of Nims personality, as elusive and complicated
as that of any human child. (Terrace 1979: 5)
In this valuable remark on the nature of ape language research, Terrace
touches what we call culture. Nim is an autobiography that describes
four years of Herb Terrace and Nims lives together. It is noteworthy that
