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Yerkish
Yerkish is an artificial language developed for use by non-human primates. It employs a keyboard whose keys contain ''lexigrams'', symbols corresponding to objects or ideas. Lexigrams were notably used by the Georgia State University Language Research Center to communicate with bonobos and chimpanzees. Researchers and primates were able to communicate using lexigram boards made in up to three panels with a total of 384 keys. Context The Yerkish language was developed by Ernst von Glasersfeld and used by Duane Rumbaugh and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh of Georgia State University while working with primates at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Primates were taught to communicate by means of a lexigram board, a computerized array of keys labeled with lexigrams. Von Glasersfeld coined the term "lexigram" in 1971, created the first 120 of them, and designed the grammar that regulated their combination. This artificial language was called Yer ...
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Panbanisha
Panbanisha (November 17, 1985 – November 6, 2012), also known by the lexigram , was a female bonobo that featured in studies on great ape language by Professor Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. Her name is Swahili for "to cleave together for the purpose of contrast." Biography Panbanisha was born at Language Research Center at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Panbanisha was the daughter of Matata, the adopted mother of the famous Kanzi, who also was an intelligent bonobo, and was the mother of two sons, Nyota and Nathen. Panbanisha resided at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa, where ape behavior and intelligence is studied. She was able to express her sadness through Yerkish when her half-brother Kanzi had to leave . During the studies, Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh had recognized the ability of communication and understanding of complex sentences. She died of a cold at the Great Ape Trust on November 6, 2012. She was 26 years old. Research The basis of the early ...
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Great Ape Language
Research into great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans to communicate with humans and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, lexigrams, and mimicking human speech. Some primatologists argue that these primates' use of the communication tools indicates their ability to use "language", although this is not consistent with some definitions of that term. Apes that demonstrate understanding Non-human animals have been recorded to have produced behaviors that are consistent with meanings accorded to human sentence productions. (A ''production'' is a stream of ''lexemes'' with semantic content. A language is grammar and a set of lexemes. A '' sentence'', or statement, is a stream of lexemes that obeys a grammar, with a beginning and an end.) Some animals in the following species can be said to "understand" (''receive''), and some can "apply" (''produce'') consistent, appropriate, grammatical streams of communication. David Pr ...
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Kanzi
Kanzi (born October 28, 1980), also known by the lexigram (from the character 太), is a male bonobo who has been the subject of several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude. Despite his achievements in the use of language, Kanzi could still not approach the levels of an average 3-year-old child. Biography Kanzi was born to Lorel and Bosandjo at Yerkes Field Station at Emory University in 1980. Shortly after birth Kanzi was stolen and adopted by a more dominant female, Matata, the matriarch of the group. In 1985, Kanzi was moved to the Language Research Center at Georgia State University. He was later relocated, along with his sister, Panbanisha, to the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Iowa. The ill-fated facility, founded in 2004 by local businessman, Ted Townsend, closed after losing funding, experiencing allegations of neg ...
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Lana (chimpanzee)
Lana (October 7, 1970 - November, 2016) was a female chimpanzee, the first to be used in language research using lexigrams. She was born at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, and the project she was allocated to when 1 year old, the LANguage Analogue project led by Duane Rumbaugh, was named after her with the acronym LANA because the project team felt that her identity was well worth preserving.(Rumbaugh, 1977, p. XXI) LANA project The researchers stated Lana showed that she could discriminate between lexigrams, sequence words grammatically and make novel utterances, demonstrating language learning. The first LANA project (1971) officially had two Principal Investigators, Rumbaugh and Ernst von Glasersfeld (cf. NIH grants HD-06016 and RR-00165). Ernst von Glasersfeld developed the language that Lana learned to use: he coined the term " lexigram", created the first 120 of them and designed the grammar that regulated their combination. This artif ...
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Ernst Von Glasersfeld
Ernst von Glasersfeld (March 8, 1917, Munich – November 12, 2010, Leverett, Franklin County, Massachusetts) was a philosopher, and emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, research associate at the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, and adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was a member of the board of trustees of the American Society for Cybernetics, from which he received the McCulloch Memorial Award in 1991. He was a member of the scientific board of the Instituto Piaget, Lisbon. Glasersfeld is known for the development of radical constructivism. Biography Glasersfeld was born in Munich, where his father, Leopold, worked as a cultural attaché in Vienna before going into photography after World War I. He was a student of mathematics at the University of Vienna before having to move out because of the Nazi threat, considering that his Pan-European family (they subscribed to the ideolog ...
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Bonobo
The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus '' Pan,'' the other being the common chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''). While bonobos are now recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes)'' due to the physical similarities between the two species. Taxonomically, the members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina (composed entirely by the genus '' Pan'') are collectively termed ''panins''. The bonobo is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face, tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. The bonobo is found in a area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Africa. The species is frugivorous and inhabits primary and secondary forests, including seasonally inundat ...
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Nyota (bonobo)
Nyota (pronounced ''en-Yo-ta''; born 1998), also known by the lexigram , is a bonobo. Nyota was born at the Language Research Center at Georgia State University. His mother was Panbanisha and his father was P-suke. With Panbanisha's death on November 6, 2012, Nyota became the sole surviving member of his immediate family. Nyota's name means 'star' in Lingala, a language from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa. Nyota was reared by Panbanisha and Kanzi with primatologists Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and William M. Fields.Living with Nyota the Bonobo
, July 8, 2006. Retrieved 2010-04-15. As a precocious youngster in 2004, Nyota is instrumental to researchers investigating the cross-generational effects of language ...
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Yerkes National Primate Research Center
The Emory National Primate Research Center (formerly known as Yerkes National Primate Research Center) located in Atlanta, Georgia, owned by Emory University, is a center of biomedical and behavioral research, is dedicated to improving human and animal health, and is the oldest of seven National Primate Research Centers partially funded by the National Institutes of Health. It is known for its nationally and internationally recognized biomedical and behavioral studies with nonhuman primates by Emory University. Its Main Station contains most of the center's biomedical research laboratories. The center also includes the Living Links Center and the Field Station near Lawrenceville, Georgia. History The center was established in 1930 by Robert Yerkes, in Orange Park, Florida, associated then with Yale University. Yerkes was a pioneering primatologist who specialized in comparative psychology. In 1965, it relocated to its location on the campus of Emory University. In April 2022 ...
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Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (born August 16, 1946) is a psychologist and primatologist most known for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their linguistic and cognitive abilities using lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. Originally based at Georgia State University's Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, she worked at the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa from 2006 until her departure in November 2013. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of Bonobo Hope. Early life, family and education Savage-Rumbaugh earned her BA degree in psychology at Southwest Missouri State University in 1970. She earned her MS degree and her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Oklahoma in 1975.She collaborates alongside her husband, renowned comparative psychologist Dr. Duane M. Rumbaugh, who was a pioneer in the study of ape language. She was asked how their study was influenced by living and working together while still at Georgia Stat ...
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Animal Language
Animal languages are forms of non-human animal communication that show similarities to human language. Animals communicate through a variety of signs, such as sounds or movements. Signing among animals may be considered complex enough to be a form of language if the inventory of signs is large, the signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition (as opposed to relatively automatic conditioned behaviors or unconditioned instincts, usually including facial expressions). In experimental tests, animal communication may also be evidenced through the use of lexigrams by chimpanzees and bonobos. Many researchers argue that animal communication lacks a key aspect of human language, the creation of new patterns of signs under varied circumstances. Humans, by contrast, routinely produce entirely new combinations of words. Some researchers, including the linguist Charles Hockett, argue that human language and animal communication differ so mu ...
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Language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of methods, including spoken, sign, and written language. Many languages, including the most widely-spoken ones, have writing systems that enable sounds or signs to be recorded for later reactivation. Human language is highly variable between cultures and across time. Human languages have the properties of productivity and displacement, and rely on social convention and learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between and . Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writing ...
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Georgia State University
Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the largest institution of higher education by enrollment based in Georgia and is in the top 10 in the nation in number of students with a diverse majority-minority student population of around 54,000 students, including approximately 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the main campus downtown. Georgia State is classified among " R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". The university's over $200 million in research expenditures for the 2018 fiscal year ranked first in the nation among universities without an engineering, medical, or agricultural school for the third year in a row. The university is the most comprehensive public institution in Georgia, offering more than 250 degree programs in over 100 fields of study spread across 10 ac ...
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