Language that breaks rules

In My Humble Opinion
1

http://www.fearofnature.com/dont-sleep-there-are-snakes-d-everett

I looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems that their language is the topic of some controversy as it appears to break our current understanding of what language consists of.

But that aside, I think it is also trying to argue about how humans “fell”. In that their language doesn’t seem to have the same level of self absorbed sayings in it that ours does or ego centered words. That they don’t have the same egoic sense of striving that causes us suffering.

2

I believe you’re drawing the wrong conclusion from evidence. It is not a truism that, ‘striving causes suffering’.

3

That’s what the link seems to be implying.

4

I’m skeptical about people who use 21st century technology to try to convince others of the the superiority of stone age, hunter gatherer, society. To be honest, I’m not even sure they are drawing that conclusion. They are just making academic and personal observations about societies on the event horizon of extinction.

5

I read his book a few years ago, and while it’s true that it does touch on the theme of modernity causing suffering (the bit I remember along those lines most vividly was that someone close to the author had committed suicide, and he had tremendous difficulty communicating the idea of someone purposefully killing themselves, but when he finally did so, they universally laughed at the concept), it’s not really that simple.

It’s an account of his years with them mixed with his linguistic theories.

The Piraha suffer. There is violence and disease. There are outside groups that take advantage of them.

The book is interesting as an account of a very different culture, and the author certainly learns from his experience, but the takeaway is not that we should all live like the Piraha or that they are somehow more pure or noble.

6

I read an article from about 10 years ago that refutes the linguistic claim that the Pirahã language actually “breaks rules” in some kind of truly unique way. They make a good argument, and they by no means disagree with the general anthropological observations which Everett makes:

Nevins, A., Pesetsky, D., & Rodrigues, C. (2009). Pirahã exceptionality: A reassessment. Language. 85(2). 355-404. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0107

7

Linguist Daniel Midgly has done some very interesting broadcasts on Piraha as part of his radio show/podcast “Talk the Talk.” He’s interviewed Everett and his son, and addressed the controversy over whether the language in fact “breaks the rules.”

http://talkthetalkpodcast.com/64-life-without-numbers/

8

I think rather than discuss the epistemics of the Piraha language, the OP is more interested in his persistent existential crisis about what gives life meaning and whether relative complexity vs. simplicity of a given civilization leads to more or less ‘suffering’, respectively. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether the Piraha even have a word for mathematics. Do they suffer less as a result of having a comparatively less advanced culture? I say, no. Why would they?

9

One account I read in the newspaper made it clear that it was not the case that the Piraha were incapable of understanding eg basic arithmetic because they spoke Martian at home, more like they did not want to send their kids to a modern-style school where that stuff is taught because they regarded it a waste of time, their own way of life was obviously superior.

10

Get off the internet and go live up in the mountains for a year, reading the Tao De Ching and Chuang Tzu daily to find and become one with “The Way”. Much better than trying to resolve conflicting views on Buddhism.

11

I counter everything you’ve posted, even those not directly related to Buddhism with what I view as one of the greatest passages about philosophy I’ve ever read. From The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu Translated by Burton Watson: https://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html#3

"Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now - now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

"A good cook changes his knife once a year-because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month-because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room - more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until - flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”

“Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!”"

No, the world is or isn’t real, striving for something leads to or happiness/unhappiness, how do I achieve enlightenment? Just a man who’s achieved enlightenment and has become one with “The Way” just by doing what he does best.

12

It’s a sentiment that is shared by a from what I gather more than a few people. Granted in some sense I can see why it might be true since I never really use history, or math greater than basic arithmetic from day to day. But yet I am not sure if I would live their life. Because a “waste of time” seems like more of an opinion. I think in a sense it might be that they don’t grasp reality fully, which might explain why they laugh at someone killing themselves, which sounds like lack of empathy.

But even then I’m not sure if such a defense of modernity compares. I mean in school I got did get to learn about different people and things I would never had been exposed to if I lived in a tribe like that. I might have led a simpler life but better seems…I don’t know.

In a sense part of my concern was the language and yet the other part is rooted in the noble savage trope (or what some people seem to advocate).

13

Off topic and not entirely true

14

I may be recalling things incorrectly, but isn’t there a theory that Piraha ended up that way because at some time in the past the adults all died and the children who were left hadn’t yet mastered the language as it used to be spoken before that event?

15

What’s clear about Pirahã is not what philosophical implications the language (or the culture in general) has. In making statements about the philosophical implications of the language and the culture Everett has no professional standing really. He’s not an expert in that sort of thing. Furthermore, during the time he lived with the Pirahã he lost his religious faith and tried to construct a new philosophical outlook. That’s a comment on his life but not really on the philosophical implications of Pirahã. It would take more people learning Pirahã and experiencing the Pirahã culture to be able to see if there’s any general implications on philosophy (if it’s even possible to make statements about such things).

It’s also not clear how Pirahã evolved to become what it is today. It’s also somewhat irrelevant. In saying that the structure (the grammar, the semantics, the inflections, the vocabulary, the pronunciation, etc.) of Pirahã differs from most other languages, that proves nothing about how it evolved. To even make guesses about that, we would have to know some related languages and use the standard methods of historical linguistics to reconstruct proto-languages for that group of languages. There are no related languages, so we can’t do that. But that’s irrelevant to the claims about Pirahã. Those claims are that right now a language (Pirahã) exists that doesn’t have certain features which some linguists have claimed are in all languages.

The question is whether Pirahã is like any other human language that has existed for at least several generations, given that it is the only language used by an isolated group and is used by all ages within that group. Where it came from and how it evolved are irrelevant to the question of what features any human language has to have. Everett’s claims are that it doesn’t have those features and therefore certain common claims (for instance, Chomsky’s claims) about how human language has to work at any given time are not true.

So what we need to look at are Everett’s claims about the structure of Pirahã. Some of the things that he notes are true of some other (perhaps not well-known) languages. He says that it has no color terms. It is very well-known that the number of color terms in languages varies greatly. He says that it has a small number of phonemes. It is very well-known that the number of phonemes in a language varies greatly. He says that it has no words for numbers. It is very well-known that some languages can’t count beyond some small number. In general, many of the things that Everett notes about Pirahã are true of other languages, although often it’s just a small number of other languages.

The most important claim that Everett makes is that Pirahã doesn’t have recursion or embedding. Everett says that this disproves certain claims by Chomsky. Chomsky says that it doesn’t. Let me just note that Chomsky’s theories of language are not universally accepted. So let’s not try to make some huge statements about Everett’s research on Pirahã (like it shows that the philosophical beliefs of most of the people of the world are wrong). Instead, let’s look at the narrow claim that Everett is making, which is that Chomsky’s theories are very flawed.

16

I’ll accept it being off topic, but prove to me unequivocally that’s it not entirely true.

17

Well, I really meant to listen to that, and hopefully enjoy further linguistic goodness at Talk the Talk, but—unlike on a normal podcast page, there is no button to click to hear the damn thing. Mustn’t make it easy for the listeners, now, must we? Oh no, no.

18

htetrasme, when I click on the first link, I get to a webpage that includes a button called “How to Listen”. When I click on it, it sends me to a webpage that gives a bunch of options for listening. One option is to listen on radio, as long as you live near Perth, Australia. The other options are for things that I’ve heard of but haven’t used. Are any of them free? Do they sign you up for something that means you will be deluged with E-mail?

19

What you are describing is called flow and has been shown to be complex when it comes to how it works. Like how it works and that it only applies to simple tasks.

20

Specifically, he asserts that Pirahã culture itself precludes embedding, because of an “immediacy of experience principle.” Nevins et.al (cited above) show that embedding itself is not necessarily incongruous with such a principle, in that embedding can represent singular experience, as well as multi-event experience, so one of Everett’s primarily claims falls flat.

Regardless, I would say that the larger issue here is how Everett positions culture–in this case the Pirahã culture–as a monolithic, inflexible entity, in the same way that traditional anthropologists would position “classical” cultures. It’s the same error, as far as I’m concerted. Cultures are not monolithic and static, but rather continuously reconstituting themselves as people live out their lives. Yes, obviously culture shapes language, and language shapes culture, but these dynamics don’t fall into predetermination in the way the Everett seems to claim.