- published: 09 Jan 2009
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Research into non-human great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans to communicate with human beings and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, and lexigrams; see Yerkish. Some primatologists argue that the primates' use of these tools indicates their ability to use "language", although this is not consistent with some definitions of that term.
Animal language research attempts to answer the following questions:
Non-human animals have been recorded to have produced behaviors that are consistent with meanings accorded to human sentence productions. (A production is a stream of lexemes with semantic content. A language is grammar and a set of lexemes. A sentence, or statement, is a stream of lexemes that obeys a grammar, with a beginning and an end.) Some animals in the following species can be said to "understand" (receive), and some can "apply" (produce) consistent, appropriate, grammatical streams of communication. David Premack and Jacques Vauclair have cited language research for the following animals:
Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.