Interesting article, about what I expected the result would be. The chimp people here in SoCal weren’t the hippie variety as far as I know. Just rich and imagining that they could teach the chimp to communicate with sign language.
Interesting to see Noam Chomsky involved. He is/was a crazy conspiracy minded Leftist, but his theories about language were sound and are highly regarded.
I have not read about the SoCal project. Maybe Koko? http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/koko_kanzi_and_ape_language_research_criticism_of_working_conditions_and.html