Pueraria chompskii

A climbing perennial vine. A space-filling invasive in some climates. The growth pattern follows a simple context free grammar. Note that the whole image is a discretely transformed copy of the bottom right quadrant.

The botanist Mynah Mockso named the species after Nam Chompsky, a goat who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition, using gestures. Nam was named after Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a similar study.

The majority of Nam's gestures referred to kudzu, her preferred food. Nam's longest recorded utterance was "Give kudzu me give eat kudzu me eat kudzu give me eat kudzu give me you."

Nam never showed any meaningful sequential behavior that rivaled human grammar. Her use of language was strictly pragmatic and used only as a means of obtaining an outcome, unlike a human child's, which can serve to generate or express meanings, thoughts or ideas. There was nothing Nam could be taught that could not equally well be taught to a pigeon using the principles of operant conditioning.

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