Saturday, June 16, 2007
There Is An Article. The Article Is At Edge. You Should Read It. But Only If You Want To.
Edge has a very long and very interesting discussion of the Pirahã language and culture over at its site. If you're not familiar with the big debates in linguistics, consider searching for "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" and "Chomsky + universal grammar" before you read the article. If you are familiar with those folks and their ideas, go read it already!
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4 comments:
Ok, I haven't finished the article because I'm just stepping out for dinner right now. But I have a concern (which may, of course, be addressed by the end of the article). Everett makes a strong disction between recursion coming from human language, and recursion coming from human thought. Paraphrasing him, "Chomsky views recursion as arising solely from human language, with the possible effect of shaping human thought." Everett, on the other hand, sees recursion as originating in human thought (in the ways we tell stories, in our general behaviour, etc.). Plus, recursion need not occur in language. There's enough of it in human (as well as animal) thought.
My question is: Why such a sharp distinction between thought and language? Isn't language just a more explicit representation of thought? If so, isn't Everett a little hard on Chomsky? Can't they just be good ole' friends and share a beer?
P.S. I will anxiously read the rest of the article, fearing my questions were premature. :D
My question is: Why such a sharp distinction between thought and language? Isn't language just a more explicit representation of thought? If so, isn't Everett a little hard on Chomsky?
That's the big question. The linguists at Language Log have written a little about it, and about this topic in general. The arrow of causality between language and culture is up for debate. If Everett is correct, though, Chomsky's idea that recursion is central to language--all language--can't be correct. His research seems to point toward much more linguistic diversity than mainstream linguists traditionally admit to.
Ohhh, can't resist this one. Penner: "The arrow of causality between language and culture is up for debate."
Indeed, philosophers do spin their wheels on this question. As far as I can see it is a pseudoproblem. Language/thought, culture/language, etc are false dichotomies to be sure. Trying to find an essential feature of language like "recursion" will lead to either an answer which is hopelessly vague, or too trivial to be interesting. Better to leave this jazz to the anthropologists: language should be studied in its concrete manifestations. Of course, I haven't argued for any of my points, they are just assertions for discussion. :)
Hmm, well, your view appears to be awfully similar to Everett's.
As I see it, there are two issues here. Actually, that's not right: There are two whole families of issues--with enough intermarriages between them to make things awkward when all of them get together.
There are the questions that center fairly straightforwardly on the structure of language; on these questions, frankly, philosophers don't have anything interesting to say. These are questions for linguists. But then there are the questions that are more philosophical. These deal with language, culture, psychology, and the interplay between them. These are meta-linguistics questions about the nature of the discipline.
Everett's research addresses both sets of issues. His challenge to Chomsky deals with the former set. Daniel's question, though, addresses the latter. So, Daniel could be right that language is "just a more explicit representation of thought." But, if so, another question arises: Is language the only such representation? If not--and I think the evidence suggests that it's not--then there is a distinction between language and thought.
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