Word: syntax
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Kennedy has also achieved a dramatic improvement in his campaign style. During the weeks that his campaign seemed to be self-destructing, the candidate himself began to shine like the political star that he was supposed to be. His speeches have become crisper and more pointed and his syntax less mangled as he relentlessly attacks Carter's economic and foreign policies. The Senator's staff work has also improved. With only two days of preparation, aides last week organized a rally for him in Pittsburgh attended by 10,000 people-the biggest turnout of his campaign...
...experts expressed skepticism, these claims of the apes' linguistic ability were widely accepted during the 1970s. But now many scientists are beginning to have second thoughts. They suggest that much of what the animals are doing is merely mimicking their teachers and that they have no comprehension of syntax. What is more, they say, the primate experimenters are probably so eager to prove their case that they often provide inadvertent cues to the animals, who quickly realize which "right" answer will bring them some goody. In short, the skeptics raise the possibility that the apes have been making monkeys...
...name of Linguist Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a staunch proponent of the idea that language ability is biologically unique to humans). The object of Terrace's experiment was to prove Chomsky wrong -to show that creatures other than man could, indeed, conquer syntax and link words into sentences, however simple...
...recent experiments preclude the possibility of trainers giving cues, consciously or sub consciously, to the subjects, but they have their own reservations about the linguistic ability of apes. Acknowledges Duane Rumbaugh: "There is no solid evidence to date that would indicate that the ape is ca pable of using syntax with competence...
...Iowa, Ted Kennedy is not so bad a performer as his Eastern drama critics make out. He has his bad days and hours, his dismal speeches, his tangled syntax. But traveling along the frosted campaign trail in those wide spaces, one can pick up echoes of some of the old magic from John...