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Daniel Everett and the Pirahã language | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6111 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 1 of 22 06 October 2010 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is anyone here familiar with Daniel Everett? He's written several books on languages and is working on a controversial new book due out next year called "Cognitive Fire" which argues that, contrary to Noam Chomsky's theories, language is not innate in us ("universal grammar"). He wrote another fascinating book last year called "Don't Sleep There are Snakes" and it's about his life as a former Christian and how he went and lived with a native Amazonian tribe called the Pirahã in an attempt to convert them and basically learned their language from scratch, documented it, provided a writing system for it and has since raised considerable controversy about it as being a language with several, unique features that set it apart from all other languages. The first half of the book deals with his attempt to missionize and convert the Pirahã and how he actually ends up losing his faith (and consequently his family) and gets converted to their worldview! The second half of the book deals exclusively with the language itself and his speculations both on learning it and on language in general.
Here's the blurb from his upcoming book: "This is a groundbreaking and controversial new theory about how we talk. Like other tools, language was invented, can be reinvented or lost, and shows significant variation across cultures. It's as essential to survival as fire - and, like fire, is found in all human societies. "Cognitive Fire" presents the bold and controversial idea that language is not an innate component of the brain as has been famously argued by Chomsky and Pinker. Rather, it's a cultural tool which varies much more across different societies than the innateness view suggests. Fusing adventure, anthropology, linguistics and psychology, and drawing on Everett's pioneering research with the Amazonian Pirahas, "Cognitive Fire" argues that language is embedded within - and is inseparable from - its specific culture. This book is like a fire that will generate much light. And much heat." Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: http://amzn.to/bpdjSC If you're interested, there's also a really interesting interview he gave on New Zealand radio about his ordeals "going native" and learning the Pirahã language: http://bit.ly/8ZRsAi Also a 90 minute lecture on language, endangered languages and the Pirahã. http://bit.ly/1buSHo 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 22 06 October 2010 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Earlier threads about Pirahã:
Team finds language without numbers Brazil’s Pirahã Tribe Pirahã Language World’s most difficult language (page 5) Edited by Iversen on 06 October 2010 at 2:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 22 06 October 2010 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Have YOU seen cold fusion?
Has your father seen cold fusion? No? Then cold fusion doesn't exist, and you don't need a word for it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6111 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 5 of 22 07 October 2010 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the links, Iversen. Should've done a search...d'oh!
Would be interesting nevertheless to hear from anyone who's read his book "Don't Sleep There Are Snakes" and what they thought of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6234 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 22 07 October 2010 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||
It's quite thought-provoking, both culturally and linguistically. It has some truly bizarre parts, such as being able to somewhat freely substitute consonants for each other; one form of speech used for shouting across rivers and in other similarly noisy environments has one consonant and one vowel, but even normal speech allows 5 of the phonemic consonants (out of a phonemic inventory of 12, including vowels) to substitute for each other at least sometimes. Everett wrote about the disbelief that publishing on this provoked, and claimed that some phoneticians flew in and confirmed what he said, but I haven't followed up on checking this. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 22 07 October 2010 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Entire books have been written on concepts that were never demonstrated or proven. Some even figure in the top best-sellers of all time. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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