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As a layman with a slight interest in linguistics, I keep coming accross the Pirahã language as an example that refutes the Chomskyan idea of universal grammar.

As a layman with a slight interest in linguistics, I keep coming accross the Pirahã language as an example that refutes the Chomskyan idea of universal grammar. As far as I understand it, this is not actually true and the professional community mostly sees Everett as a charlatan. Is this correct? Does anybody know if there are professional linguists who take his theories/observations seriously?

gshubert17 6y ago
Chomsky and most of his students call Everett a charlatan. For example, David Pesetsky, whose doctoral advisor was Chomsky, criticized Everett's work in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Language. Chomsky and Pesetsky may not be the most objective critics, though. I read Everett's popular book on the Pirahã, "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes", and found his descriptions believable, but I'm definitely not a professional linguist. There's a nice interview with Everett in https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion-and-human-thought https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion... which includes details on the controversies with Chomsky's ideas. Given Chomsky's refusal to admit he was wrong in his political judgments about Cambodia and Sudan, which some observers go so far as to label hypocrisy, I'm tending to cheer for Everett and hope he is correct.
- coolgeek 6y ago
  Depending on how you define student, everybody who ever took a linguistics class is a student of Chomsky. But you raise a good point about objectivity. So who/where are the disinterested supporters of Everett's work? What do they believe that the Chomskians are getting wrong about Everett's work? The key word in my query here is disinterested, because almost all criticism of Chomsky is (implicitly or explicitly) based on his political views, rather than his linguistic scholarship.
meepmorp 6y ago
He’s not taken too seriously. My experience: several years ago I watched Everett give a talk on Pirahã, with only a quick skim of his paper (the first one that got him attention, forgot the name). He gave a basic talk about his work, with examples and translations, etc. I wasn’t convinced by his argument, and some of his answers to fairly reasonable questions were defensive. Part of the problem is that (at the time, maybe still) all of the data on the language was collected by Everett (maybe with help). I believe he did the the translation, too. It’s reasonable to be skeptical about the data, particularly given the claims based on it. Also, he’s asserting a negative - that Pirahã lacks syntactic recursion, and you can’t prove that adequately with limited data that comes only from you (logical difficulties aside).
- leto_ii 6y ago
  Thanks for the answer. Indeed, the fact that he was working only off of his own data felt like a red flag to me. An interesting thing to follow would be if there are other people who went into the field to work with the Pirahã; and if not, why not, given the extraordinary nature of the claims? edit: A bit more insight here: https://news.mit.edu/2016/data-amazonian-piraha-language-debate-0309 https://news.mit.edu/2016/data-amazonian-piraha-language-deb... > In the other two cases, Everett’s translations of the sentences differ from those of Sheldon. Everett believes there is no conjunction in those sentences, although Sheldon’s original translations suggested there was. For instance, a Pirahã sentence transliterated as “ti xaigia ao ogi gio ai hi ahapita” was interpreted by Sheldon to mean, “Well, then I and the big Brazilian woman disappeared.” The conjunction of “I and the big Brazilian woman” could be an example of recursion. But Everett believes a better translation is: “Well, [with respect to me], the very big foreigner went away again.” And that sentence has no recursion. [...] > a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, Raiane Salles, has conducted recent fieldwork among the Pirahã unearthing potential evidence of “possessor recursion” — which creates phrases that could expand infinitely, such as “the foreigner’s parent’s dog” and “Migixoi’s husband’s mother’s clothes.” So it seems there are already some signs of possible recursion in the language. On top of this, there's always the possibility that the Pirahã can understand recursion, but they just don't use it in their language. In the end this would be the more important thing to establish - do these people have a different mental apparatus from the rest of mankind? or do they just make use of the same thing differently...

gshubert17 6y ago

Chomsky and most of his students call Everett a charlatan. For example, David Pesetsky, whose doctoral advisor was Chomsky, criticized Everett's work in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Language. Chomsky and Pesetsky may not be the most objective critics, though. I read Everett's popular book on the Pirahã, "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes", and found his descriptions believable, but I'm definitely not a professional linguist. There's a nice interview with Everett in https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion-and-human-thought https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion... which includes details on the controversies with Chomsky's ideas. Given Chomsky's refusal to admit he was wrong in his political judgments about Cambodia and Sudan, which some observers go so far as to label hypocrisy, I'm tending to cheer for Everett and hope he is correct.

coolgeek 6y ago
Depending on how you define student, everybody who ever took a linguistics class is a student of Chomsky. But you raise a good point about objectivity. So who/where are the disinterested supporters of Everett's work? What do they believe that the Chomskians are getting wrong about Everett's work? The key word in my query here is disinterested, because almost all criticism of Chomsky is (implicitly or explicitly) based on his political views, rather than his linguistic scholarship.

meepmorp 6y ago

He’s not taken too seriously. My experience: several years ago I watched Everett give a talk on Pirahã, with only a quick skim of his paper (the first one that got him attention, forgot the name). He gave a basic talk about his work, with examples and translations, etc. I wasn’t convinced by his argument, and some of his answers to fairly reasonable questions were defensive. Part of the problem is that (at the time, maybe still) all of the data on the language was collected by Everett (maybe with help). I believe he did the the translation, too. It’s reasonable to be skeptical about the data, particularly given the claims based on it. Also, he’s asserting a negative - that Pirahã lacks syntactic recursion, and you can’t prove that adequately with limited data that comes only from you (logical difficulties aside).

leto_ii 6y ago
Thanks for the answer. Indeed, the fact that he was working only off of his own data felt like a red flag to me. An interesting thing to follow would be if there are other people who went into the field to work with the Pirahã; and if not, why not, given the extraordinary nature of the claims? edit: A bit more insight here: https://news.mit.edu/2016/data-amazonian-piraha-language-debate-0309 https://news.mit.edu/2016/data-amazonian-piraha-language-deb... > In the other two cases, Everett’s translations of the sentences differ from those of Sheldon. Everett believes there is no conjunction in those sentences, although Sheldon’s original translations suggested there was. For instance, a Pirahã sentence transliterated as “ti xaigia ao ogi gio ai hi ahapita” was interpreted by Sheldon to mean, “Well, then I and the big Brazilian woman disappeared.” The conjunction of “I and the big Brazilian woman” could be an example of recursion. But Everett believes a better translation is: “Well, [with respect to me], the very big foreigner went away again.” And that sentence has no recursion. [...] > a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, Raiane Salles, has conducted recent fieldwork among the Pirahã unearthing potential evidence of “possessor recursion” — which creates phrases that could expand infinitely, such as “the foreigner’s parent’s dog” and “Migixoi’s husband’s mother’s clothes.” So it seems there are already some signs of possible recursion in the language. On top of this, there's always the possibility that the Pirahã can understand recursion, but they just don't use it in their language. In the end this would be the more important thing to establish - do these people have a different mental apparatus from the rest of mankind? or do they just make use of the same thing differently...