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| Kanzi plays the flute. |
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Fields of Discourse and Nominal Groups: English Grammar in the working day of a bonobo learning music and a researcher doing physics.
Professor William Greaves
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
This talk will explore the role grammar (nominal group structure in particular) plays in enabling enculturated bonobos to engage in a jam session with Peter Gabriel, and in enabling physicists to engage in highly specialized research.
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| Panbanisha with autoharp. |
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Background: History of Great Ape Trust of Iowa
How Kanzi and other bonobos became dialogue partners with Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. The central role of English language in the GATI bonobo research project. Evidence for Kanzi’s control of interpersonal discourse semantics in a complex negotiation with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.
Reinterpretation in a discourse context of 660 novel commands made to Kanzi, suggesting that Kanzi has some degree of higher order consciousness. Study of Panbanisha’s interpersonal discourse semantics shows a complex speaker-audience relationship. A detailed study of Kanzi’s proximal vocalizations explores whether or not a hearer can reasonably interpret Kanzi’s vocalizations as a dialect of spoken English.
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| Professor William Greaves. |
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Watching it happen: A video four days in which bonobos learn to play music
This is not “training”. A context is being created in which music becomes a part of the bonobo experiential world. The first day seems almost chaotic, but we can see nominal groups playing a part in construing musical culture. By the fourth day the apes are ready for a “jam session” with Peter Gabriel.
The point of this for an International Congress on English Grammar is that the interplay of field of discourse and semantics requires development of new nominal group structuring. We can see this with the apes and, quite spectacularly, in physics, where the demands of research result in for example, the splendidly involved modification of
detectors in large area thermal, pyroelectric, photoconductive (PC), and photovoltaic (PV) detectors.
If the interplay of field and semantics can produce such results in the diverse examples of human dialogue with bonobos “doing” music and highly technical scientific work with researchers “doing” physics in the field of radiometric and photometric calibrations, this argues strongly against pedagogies in which structure isolated from function is the object of study.
For more on the fourth International Conference on English Grammar, go here.
Great Ape Trust Background
When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
