Washoe, the sign language chimp, is dead, alas. Long after the grant money ran out, Washoe hung around. Long after Tom Sebeok got tired of his decade long fight with Washoe's people, the poor chimp kept eating bananas and making grimacing faces. Washoe was not at Tom's funeral. Washoe could not apologize for the fact that Sebeok wasted the best years of his career trying to point out that signing is not proper language, and that real language is a species-specific behavior of humans alone. The War over Washoe kept Tom from writing his great zoosemiotic magnum opus.
Washoe did not ask for any of this. There is a terrible price to pay, sometimes, for being more clever than the rest of your species.
Ask Washoe.
Ask Tom.
gary
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