Apes, Language, and the Human Mind - Hardcover

Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue; Shanker, Stuart G.; Taylor, Talbot J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195109864 ISBN 13: 9780195109863

Publisher: OUP USA, 1998

Synopsis

For more than twenty years, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has been studying the linguistic and cognitive skills of a number of laboratory-reared primates. Recently, her work with Kanzi (a bonobo) has been acknowledged as having achieved a scientific breakthrough of stunning proportions: Kanzi has acquired linguistic and cognitive skills equal to those of a 2-1/2 year-old human child.
Apes, Language and the Human Mind skillfully combines the exciting narrative regarding the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind.

About this title

Review

'...the ape-language studies of Savage-Rumbaugh and others are, in their methods if not their conclusions, classically Cartesian. From them we have learned an extraordinary amount about the cognitive and communicative skills of apes immersed in human society.' (Robert Seyfarth, Nature)

'...The study of Kanzi's comprehension is fascinating, in part because it creates so many interesting questions about the extent of his synactic and cognitive abilities and their similarity to human abilities.' (Robert W. Mitchell, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol 3, No. 6)

About the Author

Stuart G. Shanker is Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at York University, Toronto where he is also President of the Council for Early Child Development and Director of the Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative.

Shanker is at York University.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195109864
• ISBN 13: 9780195109863
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 254