Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf by Sacks Oliver

Author:Sacks, Oliver [Sacks, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780520060838
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 535156
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 1989-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

We are, as yet, almost totally ignorant of the neural substrate for such a grammar—but that there is one, and its approximate location, is indicated by the fact that there are aphasias, including Sign aphasias, in which grammatical competence, and this only, is specifically impaired. 86

86. The question of whether some nonhuman species have language, languages that make ‘infinite use of finite means,’ remains a confused and contentious one. As a neurologist I have been intrigued by descriptions of aphasia in monkeys, which suggest that the neural primordia of language, at least, evolved before man (see Heffner and Heffner, 1988).

Chimpanzees are unable to speak (their vocal apparatus is geared only for relatively crude sounds), but are able to make signs quite well, to acquire a vocabulary of several hundred signs. In the case of pygmy chimpanzees, indeed, such signs (or ‘symbols’) may be used spontaneously and passed on to other chimps. There is no doubt that these primates can acquire and use and transmit a gestural code. They may also make simple metaphors or creative couplings of signs (this has been observed in many chimps, including Washoe and Nim Chimsky). But does this, properly speaking, constitute a language? In terms of syntactic competence and generative grammar, it seems doubtful if chimpanzees can be said to have genuine language capacity. (Although Savage-Rumbaugh feels there may be a proto-grammar; see Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986).

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