http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,414291,00.html
Living without Numbers or Time
By Rafaela von Bredow
The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists. ... Whether phonetics, semantics or morphology -- what exactly makes up this universal grammar is controversial. At its core, however, is the concept of recursion, which is defined as replication of a structure within its single parts. Without it, there wouldn't be any mathematics, computers, philosophy or symphonies. Humans basically wouldn't be able to view separate thoughts as subordinate parts of a complex idea.
And there wouldn't be subordinate clauses. They are responsible for translating the concept of recursion into grammar. Renowned US psychologist Pinker believes that if the Piraha don't form subordinate clauses, then recursion cannot explain the uniqueness of human language -- just as it cannot be a central element of some universal grammar. Chomsky would be refuted.
-N
On 12/8/06, Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 12/8/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Benveniste tells us that the only linguistic universals are deictic
> > markers (here vs there, this vs that, etc) markers that place things
> > relative the the moment and locus of discourse. Other than that, it's
> > catch as catch can structure language-wise.
> >
> >
> > Joanna
>
> The _only_ linguistic universals? Are you sure you want to endorse this
> statement?
>
> Well this statement is easy to disprove empirically with a simple
> syntactical example. Just one example: Every language, so I am told, has
> what are called "container words." A container word is a word such as
> "house" or "igloo" or "box". Now when we ask a person "what color is the
> house?" everybody knows without being told that what is meant is the
> "outside" of the house. Nobody ever instructs a child that what is meant is
> the outside of the house or the box. Further more we know that we can
> express the same question about the inside of the box by simply specifying,
> "what color is the box on the inside?"
>
> Now I don't know why every language has such container words. Chomsky would
> most likely say that such words are part of the cognitive make-up of our
> mind brains and would point out similar phenomena of our language capacity.
>
> May I suggest, for anyone interested _The Atoms of Language: The Mind's
> Hidden Rules of Grammar_ by Mark C. Baker. A wonderful book and not as
> tendentious as Pinker's _The Language Instinct_. Or put it this way,
> Pinker's books is good for a 16 year old who loves to read. Baker's book is
> good if you want to learn something in depth.
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
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>
>