ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a presentation—in the book Kanzi’s Primal Language—of a famous study of the language abilities of the bonobo. It concerns, in particular, with questions about the aims of such research and with charges of anthropomorphism or anthropocentrism that may be levelled at the forms of ape language research. The authors speak of anthropomorphism as ‘projecting human terms on nonhuman realities’ (though suggesting that this understanding may itself reflect a distorted view of the situation), and anthropocentrism as ‘the tendency to take our best-known human standards for granted and to impose them on the animals, simply because they are our standards. Having a grammar in a rich sense may not be crucial to what is most important in the place that this phenomenon—language—has in our lives. ‘Our’ vocabulary, including our specifically linguistic vocabulary—‘tell’, ‘ask’, ‘reply’, ‘promise’ and the term ‘language’ itself—will no longer be simply that of a human community.
