teaching monkeys is becoming some kind of stantadrd procedure.. int he same article there is a reference about how the experiemtns proposed was also done with chilren and monkeys... I just deleted thought it would not be interesting...

The dispute is actuallu mroe about what language mweans thatn the fact that monkeys can lear symbols.. but is symbols language. No, and that is in dispute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language

Gee... I should have not delated the part of the experiemtn with monkeys.

But, basically, summing up.. yes the vision of the universal grammar of Chomsky was considered more than an hypothesis.. in the sense way that the great consensus of the 50-60's joining darwinian theories and genomics still cosntitute more than a teory..but some kind of gospel at the way we look at the world.

But , while the great consensus on biology is clearly flawed and there are hundreds of data about extinctions about embryo development ,about new emergence of capabilities whcih beceom basically flat form then on, about ecological networking about early stages of life and drastic symbiotic jumps that make it clear tthat a change is going to happen in the paradigm, with Chomsly was none of it...that's why I put it like I did... no sorrow though :) I agree with you ont he vision of cultural language.. I just thought there was an universal core... it seems that this could not be the case.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude