Pirahã

Comments

1. Quin Finnegan says

   May 15, 2007 at 4:43 am

   Yep, and scroll down here to read Everett’s explanation for how the Pirahã are noble savages who may yet help lead us out of the mess we’re in.

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2. Rufus McCain says

   May 15, 2007 at 5:36 am

   You get an interesting glimpse of this guy’s estranged wife in the New Yorker article. She remains a devout Christian and also seems more deeply in touch with the Piraha — and humble about it.

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3. Henri Young says

   May 15, 2007 at 5:36 am

   This seems like the kind of sentimentality that Walker Percy warned about.

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4. Rufus McCain says

   May 15, 2007 at 5:43 am

   He does seem like a very Percyan character. I mean one of the side characters, the foils to the protagonist.

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5. Anonymous says

   May 15, 2007 at 6:01 am

   See also this:
   http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000411

   click on the title of the paper to download

   Reply
6. Theocoid says

   May 15, 2007 at 4:12 pm

   One of my linguistics professors, a field researcher who wrote a grammar of the Shoshone language and has done considerable study of Mayan dialects, made sure to impress upon us that Chomsky’s theories simply don’t work in the field.

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7. Rufus McCain says

   May 15, 2007 at 6:19 pm

   From Percy’s perspective (maybe) Chomsky’s most important achievement was discrediting Skinner’s behaviorist approach to language. But then Chomsky ventured into the realms of these complex, convoluted grammatical structures instead of focusing on Percy’s main concern, which is the basic, triadic structure of simple naming. So from that standpoint, maybe Everett’s focus on the cultural component of language could complement Percy’s steadfast empiricism and clinging to Peirce’s triad. Maybe.

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