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The other side isn't exactly a bunch of careful scientists either [0]. Other people have visited the Pirahã and done experiments with them. It is true that the

• YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  >> Other people have visited the Pirahã and done experiments with them. It is true that they do not understand counting, for example [1][2], Those are not "other people". The first reference is a paper where Everett is one of the authors and the other is a paper from a collaborator of Everett: the author even studied the Piraha and their arithmetic skills while living with the Piraha along with the Everetts. Show me a paper on the Piraha language that has nothing to do with Everett and that duplicates Everett's findings. >> The Chomskyan side of the argument has also been characterized by moving the goalposts and formal incoherence. See for example [3]. I don't think that reference means what you think it means. Actually I think it means exactly the opposite: What I can say, what I have said, with most certainty is what recursion is supposed to stand for within the theory Chomsky has constructed—with remarkable consistency, I should add. Which is what I've also heard before from critics of Chomsky in general (frex, I believe Alex Clark has said similar things, but I might be wrong). Chomsky himself has been remarkably consistent, to the point he sounds like a broken record, regarding what recursion in language means. Whether "his side" (other linguists of his school) has been more or less consistent, I don't know but in any case I'm more interested in the fact that Daniel Everett seems to be a complete and utter sleazebag who is unashamedly taking advantage of a peoples who can't really speak for themselves (because he's standing in the way!) to further some obscure personal agenda. >> Other linguists have also independently claimed that other languages lack recursive embedding, for example Riau Indonesian, so the claim about Pirahã is not isolated or crazy a priori. I hadn't heard of Riau Indonesian, so I looked it up in wikipedia and I could not find anything about it lacking recursive structure. Instead it "is considered by linguists to have one of the least complex grammars among the languages of the world,[citation needed] apart from creoles, possessing neither noun declensions, temporal distinctions, subject/object distinctions, nor singular/plural distinction."
  • canjobear 10y ago
    > I hadn't heard of Riau Indonesian Googling "hierarchical syntax riau" seems to pull up the relevant stuff, if you're interested.
    • YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
      Googling that with quotation marks brings up only your own comment- for a moment there I thought you were making a joke about recursion. I'll have a look at the stuff that comes up without quotes, thanks.
• YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  I'll quote from your last reference: As I have tried to show, those issues, whilst important and interesting in themselves, have little to do with recursion as this concept has been understood within mathematical logic, the connotation Chomsky has always employed, it seems. As such, there is a bit of a disconnect between what Chomsky is talking about when talking about recursion and what other linguists are talking about when talking about recursion. As a result, rather incompatible claims are being put forward in the literature; indeed, to defend that what is universal in linguistics is the recursively-defined operations of a computational system (clearly Chomsky's take) is very different from the claim that all languages must exhibit self-embedded sentences if recursion is to be accepted as such a central concept (Everett is probably the most prominent example of this line of thought). Like I say- that paper basically claims that Chomsky's version of recursion in language has changed very little if at all, and that Everett is grossly misrepresenting it (or its consistency). I would add: willfully so.