ABSTRACT
The continuing success of projects investigating the linguistic and cognitive abilities of apes has raised the issue of how the acquisition and use of language-like skills by chimpanzees and a gorilla relates to the ontogenic and evolutionary development of language in humans. Comparisons between apes and children are dependent not only upon progress in ape language research, but also upon the methodological and theoretical perspectives of child language studies. Through a new emphasis on communication and the social context of language development, investigators have discovered what mothers have always known — that even very young children are communicating a great deal of information through very simple constructions. The enduring impact of language research with apes may be a shift in the worldview in which we come to realize that we share the world, and perhaps the universe, with other intelligent thinking and communicating creatures.
