Nim Chimpsky (November 19, 1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition (codenamed 6.001) at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace.
The validity of the study is the subject of dispute, as Terrace argued that all ape-language studies, including Project Nim, were based on misinformation—from the chimps. R. Allen and Beatrix Gardner did a similar study known as Project Washoe, in which the chimpanzee was also raised like a human child. Washoe was given affection and participated in everyday social activity with her adoptive family. Her ability to communicate was far more developed than Nim's. Nim lived 24 hours a day with his human family from birth; Washoe had spent her first 10 months in a research laboratory prior to being moved to a language study. But both chimps could use fragments of American Sign Language to make themselves understood.
Chimpsky was given his name as a pun on that of Noam Chomsky, the foremost theorist of human language structure and generative grammar at the time, who held that humans alone were "hard wired" to develop language
The validity of the study is the subject of dispute, as Terrace argued that all ape-language studies, including Project Nim, were based on misinformation—from the chimps. R. Allen and Beatrix Gardner did a similar study known as Project Washoe, in which the chimpanzee was also raised like a human child. Washoe was given affection and participated in everyday social activity with her adoptive family. Her ability to communicate was far more developed than Nim's. Nim lived 24 hours a day with his human family from birth; Washoe had spent her first 10 months in a research laboratory prior to being moved to a language study. But both chimps could use fragments of American Sign Language to make themselves understood.
Chimpsky was given his name as a pun on that of Noam Chomsky, the foremost theorist of human language structure and generative grammar at the time, who held that humans alone were "hard wired" to develop language
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