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  • From: "JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] BO and BO)
  • Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 09:14:52 +0100

Hi Karl,

thanks for taking the time to read the article. The
reason I present the article as an example of what
languages may have been like is the following. This
culture is the only one I know of which has remained
completely hunter-gatherer in type. While there are
other hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon they have
not demonstrated the same resistance to farming
training as the Piraha who just simply refuse to learn
anything which does not help their *immediate* future.
They are the only tribe I know of that have retained
the format of the most ancient of tribes and whose
language, as a result, could attest to the range of
expression typical of those times.

There have been many linguistic stories such as the
the Eskimos having many words for snow which we don't
have which when closer examined turn out to be
falacies as we too have as great a range of expression
(snow, powder, hail, slush). Close linguistic study of
any language or culture reveals that it contains the
same basic core set of universal concepts as Brown's
'Universal People' reveals. In fact, Cavalli-Sforza's
research shows that there is more difference between
two randomly picked persons of the same culture than
between the average of two 'different' cultures.

The Piraha themselves, even though they have minor
cultural differences which make them unique still
embrace this core set of universal concepts and any
claims that they don't, on closer analysis, turn out to
be utter rubbish. e.g. the claim that they have no
expression of colour is immediately contradicted in the
article by the observation that they use objects whose
colour is well known to describe colour. Hang on a
minute! Don't we do that in English (gold, silver,
copper, bronze, emerald, ruby etc.)?

Isaac's theory interests me, however, all my
linguisitic research up till now shows me that in every
language their is a phonetic training phase of language
acquisition, the 'goo-goo, ga-ga' phase, where no
meaning whatsoever is associated to the gibberish
input given to the child. For me, for Isaac's theory to
have any linguistic basis, he would have to find at
least one living language which supports his model.
However, I fear that not even the Piraha could help his
cause here and my suspicions are that not even one of
the now more than 6M known languages exhibits the
behaviour he is proposing.


James Christian Read
BSc Computer Science (thesis: concept driven machine translation using the
Aleppo codex)
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew


































































































g language which supports his model.
However, I fear that not even the Piraha could help his
cause here and my suspicions are that not even one of
the now more than 6M known languages exhibits the
behaviour he is proposing.


James Christian Read
BSc Computer Science (thesis: concept driven machine translation using the
Aleppo codex)
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew





























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