Overview

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work on the language capabilities of the bonobo Kanzi has intrigued the world because of its far-reaching implications for understanding the evolution of the human language. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of the filmed language tests. It argues that while the tests prove that Kanzi has language, the even more remarkable manner in which he originally acquired it - spontaneously, in a culture shared with humans - calls for a re-thinking of language, emphasizing its primal cultural dimensions.

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9781349545032

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Reviews

'This book caused me to think in exciting new ways about language and its evolution. It represents a groundbreaking addition to the literature on language, situated right at the intersection of a number of disciplines, ranging from anthropology to psychology to linguistics to neuroscience - and of course, philosophy.' Barbara J. King, College of William & Mary, USA 'It has been said that language theorists tend to head for the door on those rare occasions in which Wittgenstein is brough into a lecture. I think Kanzi's Primal Language is just the thing to open their minds to how the kind of conceptual investigation pioneered by Wittgenstein might bear importantly on their interests. The book should also be of interest to philosophers of science, in its provocative challenge to our normal scientific culture...As for those of us who are called upon to interpret and teach Wittgenstein, I believe we will be able to find in it, at the very least, many fresh and illuminating examples to illustrate his ideas and methods.' - William H. Brenner, Philosophical Investigations

'This book caused me to think in exciting new ways about language and its evolution. It represents a groundbreaking addition to the literature on language, situated right at the intersection of a number of disciplines, ranging from anthropology to psychology to linguistics to neuroscience - and of course, philosophy.' Barbara J. King, College of William & Mary, USA 'It has been said that language theorists tend to head for the door on those rare occasions in which Wittgenstein is brough into a lecture. I think Kanzi's Primal Language is just the thing to open their minds to how the kind of conceptual investigation pioneered by Wittgenstein might bear importantly on their interests. The book should also be of interest to philosophers of science, in its provocative challenge to our normal scientific culture...As for those of us who are called upon to interpret and teach Wittgenstein, I believe we will be able to find in it, at the very least, many fresh and illuminating examples to illustrate his ideas and methods.' - William H. Brenner, Philosophical Investigations

'This book caused me to think in exciting new ways about language and its evolution. It represents a groundbreaking addition to the literature on language, situated right at the intersection of a number of disciplines, ranging from anthropology to psychology to linguistics to neuroscience - and of course, philosophy.' Barbara J. King, College of William & Mary, USA 'It has been said that language theorists tend to head for the door on those rare occasions in which Wittgenstein is brough into a lecture. I think Kanzi's Primal Language is just the thing to open their minds to how the kind of conceptual investigation pioneered by Wittgenstein might bear importantly on their interests. The book should also be of interest to philosophers of science, in its provocative challenge to our normal scientific culture...As for those of us who are called upon to interpret and teach Wittgenstein, I believe we will be able to find in it, at the very least, many fresh and illuminating examples to illustrate his ideas and methods.' - William H. Brenner, Philosophical Investigations

Author Information

PÄR SEGERDAHL is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Bioethics at the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden. He has published several philosophical inquiries into language in British and American journals, and in his book Language Use (1996). He currently leads a research project studying the concept of natural behaviour in domestic animals. WILLIAM FIELDS is Research Scientist at the new Great Ape Trust of Iowa in Des Moines (GATI), USA. Before the move to GATI he was Associate Program Director at the Language Research Centre in Atlanta, where he developed a novel anthropological understanding of ape language research. SUE SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH is Professor of Biology and Psychology at Georgia State University, USA. She has published results from her groundbreaking research on ape language in numerous scientific journals and in the influential books Apes, Language and the Human Mind (with Stuart G. Shaker and Talbot J.Taylor) and Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (with Roger Lewin). She is currently Director of the Bonobo Research Program at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, USA.

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