Inter-Mountain Farmer | 1902-11-18 | Page 4 | Professor Garner's Monkey Talk

PROFESSOR GARNER'S MONKEY TALK I'rofcsior It 1j Garner return from tho study In African wilds of the chatter chat-ter of inonke)s ma) have an Import-unce Import-unce not dreamed of b) thoie who are disposed to poke fun nt his hobby of stud) lug alleged monkey speech Trom quite as unpromising beglnnlugs most Important developments have come. To what extent ho may have found language lan-guage among thc Inonkcjs will of course largely depend on what 1 held to he language W o all know that mail) animals have what might be called voial expression, no one can mlstako the Jo ous bark of a dog for his growl, the expect int neigh jt thc horse as he see his food broughiyto hlm Is wholl) different from his snort of fear, nnd this ln turn U nltogcther unlike his squeal of rage bo, it Is probible that tho moukc)s emit sounds- of various sorts, nnd that one who makes study of the? animals nnd their wa)s will ionic to understmd and Interpret tho bound to some extent, the main question ques-tion Is do these sounda go further than mere stgnils of content, or desire, ex-pcttunc), ex-pcttunc), or passion such ns oilier animals ani-mals also commonly use. If the) do not, then the term langungc la too limited lim-ited to cover their case, for that sort of sounds Is not language It would also bc expected mil almost necessu-rll) necessu-rll) It would How, that whatever of real linguag ould be possible anioiii; monk), woull be etude unci of extremely ex-tremely Miuill tange, the ' language ' coul I hatdly go much further than the Innrtliulito sound we have icfcncd to If It went to the extent of convo)lng to each other where food wns lo be obtained ob-tained that would he no more thin mull) nnhnals come), and even Insects do ns much But even a small udvanro In Ood-glven thought nnd abstract expression ex-pression beyond these mere animal signals would he if proved most welcome wel-come to biological stu lent And If riofenor t.arnei has brought tills lu surh form thnt he can prove its truth, thin he has made an advnnee lu inih-piunttve inih-piunttve biology that will bo pretty certain cer-tain to jleld important results