Out on a limb over language

Read more here: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/o...

Linguist Daniel Everett thinks that the language of the Pirahã - an indigenous tribe from Brazil - contradicts the theory that all languages share a single, innate grammar

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  Science & Technology

[thedonnellan]

Suck on that Mr Chomsky!!!

[Dan Frederiksen]

leave the piraha alone! : )

interesting people. I would hope they always keep in mind what their presence does to their culture. it would be a shame if they lost their culture only to become drunks in our society.

we could learn something from the ideals of star trek the next generation in that regard. a non interference directive. come to them as one of them

[F00dTube]

So he can say Koxoi's child has a dog .

[MorPHziE]

Chillest group of people ever. I'd wanna hang with them.

[katiemilker .]

This video is so cool, the Pirahã are doing great research on those Europeans, maybe someday they will understand their Language lol.

[minzhide]

@pontaven12 The argument in 'Pirahã Exceptionality: A Reassessment' was based heavily on the ideas that brought about Merge, namely that everything is embedded b/c constituency (or dependency, but that brings in whole new issues in itself) grammar is 'right'. So, from a theory internal standpoint 'embedding' is unfalsifiable, even if you found a language that only permits two morpheme sentences. So far I haven't seen anyone address these areas on either side, which really leaves it wide open.

[minzhide]

If you're talking about 'Pirahã Exceptionality: A Reassessment' it was written by three linguists, but one was from MIT, and it shouldn't be taken seriously. They were unable to coherently argue that any structures were embedded, failing to recognize that never do you see arguments within an 'embedded' structure that has unambiguously embedded scope, they mischaracterized -sai phrase ordering w/ respect to Bengali, and misrepresented the Mandarin pronominal inventory... pure garbage.

[Dan Frederiksen]

that's very civilized of you. any particular reason?

[Slumpnasty]

I really want to kick your ass.

[theskilled99]

Might be a good idea if people learnt a little bit more than we learn from this vid before they make any judgments on Everett's methods and the validity of his research with regards embedded clauses. You could read his papers on the subject first for a start.

[plathhs]

It looks like someone needs to spend more than 25 years with these people in the jungle, and then come back and tell us whether he has changed his mind or not.

[deiutz]

oh you...