Pirahã defies Chomsky's theory of universal grammar | Hacker News Reader

Pirahã defies Chomsky's theory of universal grammar

newyorker.com

8 pointsj2d26 comments

Everett's claims have provoked a firestorm of debate. I was lucky enough to take a seminar with David Pesetsky from MIT shortly after Everett's story began appearing in the popular media, and he discussed what he perceived as serious flaws in Everett's findings and methodology. Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues have since published a lengthy and detailed rebuttal (http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000411) that shows that Piraha does in fact have recursion. In fact, the surprising thing about Piraha is how unremarkable it is. It shares traits with German, Hindi, Hebrew, and many more languages. Pesetsky, et. al. also believe that the argument that quantifiers do not exist is not supported by the facts. More details are in the paper.

As far as their culture is concerned, there is evidence from other anthropologists that the Piraha do indeed have creation myths (the rebuttal paper actually includes one on page 44).

People jump on stories like these because it makes for a good news story ("Rebel Linguist Takes Down Noam Chomsky"). But the evidence I've seen doesn't sound so convincing.

Linguistics is not my field, so please bear with me...

As much as I admire and respect Chomsky, would it be too far-fetched to claim that he lacks field work and expects the world to adapt to his theories, rather than adapting his theories to the world?

Theoretical physicists sometimes suffer from the same problem. They see reality as an approximation of theory. Experimental physicists are the ones "in the trenches", so why not listen to what they have to say? Same goes for linguists. Advances in theory should be based on experiment and observation. Otherwise, theory becomes l'art pour l'art and degenerates.

He does lack field work. But there are many other linguists, like Pesetsky and Stephen Pinker who have spent plenty of time in the field.

Field work for linguists amounts to working with people on dying and lost languages, but also the hard work of understanding and analyzing the intricacies of common languages like Hindi, German, and English. While Chomsky himself may not spend an inordinate amount of time proving his theories in the field, others have.

It should be noted, that Chomsky's theories have changed over time to reflect current findings. But the basic ideas of Universal Grammar and the essence of recursion in language have stayed the same.

The rebuttal paper is discussed in the article.

From the article: "Fitch’s experiments were inconclusive on the subject of whether Chomsky’s universal grammar applied to the Pirahã" And Tecumseh Fitch is the one who developed a concept of Recursion in linguistics. How do you explain that?

A superb piece. I couldn't help reading the whole damn thing. The interplay between the scientific and human dramas is masterfully done. There are so many things I could say about this article that I'm not even going to try.

I didn't recognize the name John Colapinto, but it didn't take long to figure out that I've heard him before. He wrote a book about the infamous case of a boy who, after a botched circumcision as a baby, was forcibly raised like a girl to satisfy the pet gender theory of an unscrupulous psychologist. It was a tragic story. The boy grew up to courageously challenge the identity that had been imposed on him and lived as an adult male, but killed himself a few years after the book was published. I remember hearing a riveting interview with him and Colapinto on Fresh Air (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1111038).

So that makes two great pieces by John Colapinto. I wonder what else I've missed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com