On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Chuck Grimes<cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
> So there are a lot of political overtones to using ASL in primate
> studies. What? We're monkeys? You think our language is so stupid, you
> can teach it to a monkey? See those are the political overtones.
I think part of what fed into this was non-signers teaching the signs to Koko, then saying "Hey! She knows ASL!" And ASLers seeing the results (on par with "happy apple Koko happy happy") and being like, uh, no.
My own window on this was through a GF who taught at a school for deaf wards of the state, among them a couple who due to isolation had missed the language acquisition window. Not an enviable state.
-- Andy