ABSTRACT
The forma mentera of psycholinguistics has in recent years shifted from a reverence for Chomskian grammars innately imprinted and genetically unfolded to an appreciation of language as a cognitive process fundamentally similar to other intelligent behaviors. In 1972, the Gardners lectured at Stanford on the acquisition of American Sign Language by the chimpanzee Washoe, an event which fired the author with the ambition to become involved in the examination of the language abilities of the great apes. Words represented in the early vocabularies of children are very similar in semantic content and proportion to those of Koko. For both, the most prominent category is food and drink, followed by animals, then clothing and personal items. Koko's linguistic interchanges with her companions indicate her comprehension of their utterances and illustrate her appropriate use of signs in a given context.
