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Interesting, it seems the Everett family is still obsessed with the Pirahã. This is both a nice thing (indigenous languages and societies are poorly studied) as
by caio1982 9y ago
Interesting, it seems the Everett family is still obsessed with the Pirahã. This is both a nice thing (indigenous languages and societies are poorly studied) as a bad one (it doesn't help them with more linguistic authority at all, others should study the Pirahã instead). As a linguist I used to feel a bit of shame for liking the Everett's research, oh well...
- derriz 9y agoI'm curious, why is it shameful for liking their research?
- caio1982 9y agoAmong many linguists the whole study of the Pirahã language is sort of bogus because it goes against a few core ideas of Chomsky that they love so much, almost like a dogma. I've never heard a linguist describing Everett's work as anything other than "cute, but wrong". Personally, I think that's all sad scientifically speaking.
- panglott 9y agoYou must hear from relatively a lot of generativist linguists and syntacticians. The linguists at Language Log and elsewhere regularly praise Everett's scholarship in descriptive linguistics. And there is literally no important dispute left, except non-Pirahã specialists claiming Pirahã has subordinate clauses. Getting Everett banned from working with the Pirahã is just sad and pathetic. http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/03/28/poisonous-dispute/ http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/03/28/poiso... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3857 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3857
- nandemo 9y agoThe Everett Sr.'s paper that I linked elsewhere in this thread mentions a bunch of other researchers that have studied Piraha.