>>It is impossible for the Piraha to not understand
>>colour because it is an intrinsic part of our cognitive
>>development (the foundation upon which we build
>>language.
This is the issue with Piraha. The Linguist, Dan Everett, is arguing
that the language is an exception to Chomskyian generative grammar
and linguistic universals. This is most evident in the fact that they
do not seem to use recursion, which is one of the most fundamental
language universals. Recursion is the ability to create a more
complex thought by embedding a phrase within a phrase within a
phrase. If I remember correctly from when I previously read the New
Yorker article, the example he gives is that they would not say "The
dog who went down to the river caught a fish." Instead they would use
a series of short assertions: "The dog went down to the river. The
dog caught a fish."
Everett anticipates the argument that this would imply they are a
cognitively inferior ethnic group. He does not hold that they are
cognitively inferior, but that they have a cultural aversion to any
sort of abstraction or cultural memory. Rather their way of thinking
is entirely framed by the present. They create no art and have no
myths or legends that are passed down in their society. This is also
reflected in the way they speak about color in that they chose
whatever analogy fits them in the moment to describe color. It's not
that they don't understand color, but that they don't care about
having a generic term for "red". Thus Yitzhak's point:
>>Thus, one day they may say, take the gold-colored bowl, the next
day,take the fire-colored bowl, etc.
The reason why Bible translation has been unsuccessful, in Dan
Everett's opinion, is not completely that the target language is
unsuitable, but that the Piraha could care less about stories about
people from another time or another place.
Now, the Everetts disagree about how successfully they have been at
learning the Piraha language (Dan's ex-wife is still a SIL translator
and still working on learning the language. Her opinion is that it is
partly a tone language so that more subtlety can be expressed by
tone). Further, the Piraha feel threatened by outsiders and
aggressively resist change, so one has to wonder exactly how much of
their culture they have decided to share with these linguists and
anthropologists, even the Everetts who have slowly built their trust
(I love the story in the article about the two anthropologist
brothers who try to "delight" the locals by making silly sounds only
to receive blank stares). Lastly, as Everett has attacked the
foundation of contemporary linguistics, the issue has obviously
become polemicized so it is difficult to wade through the rhetoric.
This is why other linguists have attacked Everett's view of the color
issue.
Personally, I find the issue very interesting, but am in no position
to make judgments either way. It is a good reminder to us to balance
our more "universal" statements about language by constantly reading
individual texts to remember all the weird ways real language can
vary. At the same time, Piraha is such a rare and extreme case we
should be careful about how much weight we give it in the big picture.
Sincerely,
Pete Bekins
From kwrandolph AT gmail.com Tue Aug 21 11:23:59 2007
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Masoretic Pointing and CV-syllables
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