Signing behavior in apes: A critical review

It is ten years since Beatrice and Allen Gardner first reported signing behavior by their chimpanzee Washoe. During this period, the claims on behalf of the language abilities of non-human primates have grown steadily. The Gardners initially reported establishing “two way communication” with Washoe via a “standardized system of gestures” (Gardner & Gardner, 1969). In a later paper, they claimed that Washoe’s knowledge of “sentence con-

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