/lit/ - Literature

>>15932040
I'm not that poster, but I can explain.

Pirahã is a language spoken by a Brazilian hunter-gatherer tribe. It apparently lacks certain features that are considered to be universal among human languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language

Daniel Everett, the researcher who studies Pirahã, claims that the language disproves Chomsky's theory of universal grammar. Chomsky's theory states that certain aspects of linguistic structure, such as recursion, are shared by all humans - in other words there is a genetic/neurological basis for the human language faculty that creates a universal foundation from which all languages develop. Universal grammar would explain why all human languages are largely identical from a structural point of view, the only difference being the superficial sounds used to produce them.

Since Pirahã lacks some of these structural features (Everett's evidence for this is actually a little fishy), it seems to call into question the existence of an innate universal grammar. In truth, it does no such thing. In Chomsky's own words:

“The language [Pirahã] is “unique” because of the publicity it has received and the extravagant claims that have been made about it. Apart from that, it is very much like many other languages, as has been shown by careful scholarship. As a matter of simple logic, it would be impossible for the language to contradict any theory of mine, even if the claims about the language were true. The reason is simple. These theories have to do with the faculty of language: the basis for acquiring and using individual languages. That has always been clear, explicit, and unambiguous. The speakers of Pirahã share the common human language faculty; some are fluent speakers of Portuguese. That ends the discussion.

The primary claim of “uniqueness” is that Pirahã lacks recursion, which is, plainly, a core property of the human faculty of language. Suppose that the claim about Pirahã were true. That would be a curiosity, but nothing more. Similarly, if some tribe were found in which people wear a patch over one eye and hence do not use binocular vision, it would tell us nothing at all about the human faculty of vision.”

Even if Pirahã lacked recursion (which apparently it doesn't), this wouldn't be evidence that a universal language faculty does not exist in the human brain. It would simply be an example of a bizarre cultural development. And since the Pirahã people are perfectly capable of learning other languages like Portuguese, they clearly do have the same language faculty as everybody else.

Sorry for the blogpost. Noam explains it all in this interview: https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/2016/10/04/chomsky-we-are-not-apes-our-language-faculty-is-innate/