Neuroscience
Heard an interview with linguistic anthropologist Dan Everett (mp3) on "Sci Pod", New Scientist's podcast.
Everett talks about the Piraha (pronounced "pita ha", best I can tell without a phonetic alphabet) people's lack of words for numbers and things that happened in the past or will happen in the future. They like to have concrete knowledge of events, Everett says, and they only have words for things like "small" or "relatively larger". Everett says, "the Piraha show us that you can get by just fine without numbers." Hmmm.
But does their language affect their culture? Or does their culture affect their language. A great debate!
See the article: Lost for words; They've no myths, no numbers or colours and few words for past or present. No wonder the Pirahã people defy our most cherished ideas about language, says Kate Douglas, New Scientist, March 18, 2006. Note: You can't get the full-text from the New Scientist web site, but it's on LexisNexis and InfoTrac's Business & Company Resource Center.
See also Everett's article in Current Anthropology: "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language." Current Anthropology 46.4 (August-Oct 2005): 621(26). Note: You can't get the full-text from the Current Anthropology web site, but it's in InfoTrac OneFile.
- Elsewhere
For when you've had enough of journal articles: Hollywood actress Natalie Portman is a cognitive neuroscientist. Workaholics Anonymous has launched in America - the trouble is people are too busy to attend. Does the language of the Pirahã tribe challenge...
- Updates
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- Lis Problems With Recursion
An odd bit of indexing news regarding the New Yorker article on linguistics. As you can tell from my post, and certainly from the article itself, it's primarily about linguistics and language. It's also tangentially about Christianity, as Everett...
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Neuroscience
A Linguistic Anthropologist in Brazil
Heard an interview with linguistic anthropologist Dan Everett (mp3) on "Sci Pod", New Scientist's podcast.
Everett talks about the Piraha (pronounced "pita ha", best I can tell without a phonetic alphabet) people's lack of words for numbers and things that happened in the past or will happen in the future. They like to have concrete knowledge of events, Everett says, and they only have words for things like "small" or "relatively larger". Everett says, "the Piraha show us that you can get by just fine without numbers." Hmmm.
But does their language affect their culture? Or does their culture affect their language. A great debate!
See the article: Lost for words; They've no myths, no numbers or colours and few words for past or present. No wonder the Pirahã people defy our most cherished ideas about language, says Kate Douglas, New Scientist, March 18, 2006. Note: You can't get the full-text from the New Scientist web site, but it's on LexisNexis and InfoTrac's Business & Company Resource Center.
See also Everett's article in Current Anthropology: "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language." Current Anthropology 46.4 (August-Oct 2005): 621(26). Note: You can't get the full-text from the Current Anthropology web site, but it's in InfoTrac OneFile.
- Elsewhere
For when you've had enough of journal articles: Hollywood actress Natalie Portman is a cognitive neuroscientist. Workaholics Anonymous has launched in America - the trouble is people are too busy to attend. Does the language of the Pirahã tribe challenge...
- Updates
In which we revisit some earlier posts and see what's new. This is partly because now that classes are over, I have time to catch up on old issues of the New Yorker and New Scientist, leading to some blog bits. Crows Last July, I wrote about the intelligence...
- Lis Problems With Recursion
An odd bit of indexing news regarding the New Yorker article on linguistics. As you can tell from my post, and certainly from the article itself, it's primarily about linguistics and language. It's also tangentially about Christianity, as Everett...
- Talks With Whales
Research News from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Warbling Whales Speak a Language All Their Own “Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form...
- More About Al Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
The New York Times reported on Feb. 1, 2005 about a new sign language developing in the Negev desert of Israel. More recently, New Scientist covered the story as well, in their Oct. 22, 2005 issue. In A language is born, Michael Erard reports several...