Word: laura
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...Laura (after tickling him): Now you tickle...
Pupil (tickling her): Me tickle Laura...
This dialogue between Laura and her charge might not seem unusual, except for one thing: the pupil was not a human child but a young chimpanzee named Nim. Like several others of his primate kin, Nim had been taught to communicate with humans in American Sign Language, a system of hand gestures developed for the deaf.* He eventually learned to make and recognize 125 signs. But the frisky little chimp and other apes who have received such "language" instruction are now the center of a raging academic storm. The issue: can apes really master the essence of human language...
Toward that goal, Terrace, with Laura Petitto, a student assistant, and other trainers, put Nim through 44 months of intensive sign-language drill, while treating him much as they would a child. In some ways the chimp was an apt student, learning, for example, to "sign" dirty when he wanted to use the potty or drink when he spotted someone sipping from a Thermos. Nonetheless, Nim never mastered even the rudiments of grammar or sentence construction. His speech, unlike that of children, did not grow in complexity. Nor did it show much spontaneity; 88% of the time he "talked" only...
What Moore has settled for-playing the bedridden Claire Harrison-is unlike anything she has ever done and especially unlike the two sitcom characters that made her famous: the perky housewife Laura Petrie of The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66) and the spunky TV news producer Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77). Says Moore: "I felt an affinity for Claire. She has a wonderful sense of humor, but she also knows very definitely what she is about...