Comments on: Immune to missionaries

By: Agnostic

Agnostic — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:47:03 +0000

But maybe I’ll skim through and see if there’s any crucial stuff that Nevins et al didn’t highlight…

By: Agnostic

Agnostic — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:45:46 +0000

I guess I should have said “unexplained” rather than “sudden” conversion — there are discrepancies with his earlier accounts, bearing on the issues, that he apparently doesn’t acknowledge let alone explain. We all change our minds, but we should said why.
I don’t think I’ll read Everett’s paper, but the Nevins et al article quote extensively from it and two other major papers of his on Piraha. This itself is a decently long paper, so they lay out the details well enough, I think.

By: razib

razib — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:10:30 +0000

also, yeah, this smells of tasaday. i wish the new yorker article would have alluded to it explicitly just to get that issue out of the way.

By: razib

razib — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:03:51 +0000

assman, could you mind reading everett’s paper??? i know it’s long…but you are the local linguist.

By: razib

razib — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 01:50:28 +0000

Can anyone who’s read the NYer article confirm or disconfirm that it mentions that Everett’s earlier work, including his dissertation, paints Piraha as having embedding and quantification, and that he’s recently changed his mind / re-interpreted his earlier work? That’s pretty relevant, and would give the audience pause — like, why the sudden conversion?
you should read the new yorker article. it doesn’t sound like a ‘sudden conversion,’ but a gradual turning away from previous positions.

By: Agnostic

Agnostic — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:37:14 +0000

And about their religious propensities — the Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues article also has a (short) section on culture. They report on the extensive work of an anthropologist (Goncalves) who has studied the Piraha, concerning their mythology. In short, they have a respectable mythology, although no “genesis” myth — the universe is assumed to have always existed, though its present form with humans, plants, animals, etc., they have a story for. (Apparently this isn’t so odd cross-culturally).
So the “culturally constrained cognition” re: religion is also probably wrong. I would be very cautious about much of this research now, lest the Margaret Mead incident repeat itself. It looks like most, maybe all, of the “if this turns out to be true” statements don’t actually turn out to be true.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:09:02 +0000

It would seem to me that the Piraha people may be related to the Tasaday people – LOL

By: Agnostic

Agnostic — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:36:38 +0000

Just an interim update, having read through the sections on recursion and quantifiction in the Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues article: Piraha does have recursion and quantification. Dog bites man. I’ll write it up sometime soon for GNXP classic.
Can anyone who’s read the NYer article confirm or disconfirm that it mentions that Everett’s earlier work, including his dissertation, paints Piraha as having embedding and quantification, and that he’s recently changed his mind / re-interpreted his earlier work? That’s pretty relevant, and would give the audience pause — like, why the sudden conversion?

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:31:23 +0000

There’s a theory that the Amazon was once more heavily populated, and that the present Amazonian peoples are relatively late developments. (The Eskimos definitely are a people like that — their culture developed in the last 2000 years). I believe that there’s also a theory that the diverse languages of New Guinea are not ancient, and that there is a dynamic on New Guinea which causes neighboring language to diverge rapidly (thus making glottochronology useless). In general, the progresive model which shows a smooth movement from the ancient to the modern has been diminished in scope, if not entirely junked.

By: DarwinCatholic

DarwinCatholic — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:06:44 +0000

Right, that much is clear. I suppose one could theorize that the initial human settlers of the new world didn’t have a concepts of time, abstract thought, number, etc. and that all other groups _except_ this one developed it after they got here, but that seems really silly.
Which leaves you wondering, what kind of cultural selection factor would have pushed this particular group to abandon those concepts?

By: razib

razib — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:21:04 +0000

I find myself wondering if what is being observed with this tribe is a culture which for some reason has selectively repressed certain elements of thought and cultural tendencies which were in fact present in some of their ancestors.
yep. other new world peoples have a concept of time, obviously. the maya were obsessed with it.

By: DarwinCatholic

DarwinCatholic — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:59:59 +0000

I find myself wondering if what is being observed with this tribe is a culture which for some reason has selectively repressed certain elements of thought and cultural tendencies which were in fact present in some of their ancestors. Given the accepted dates for human migration to the new world, it seems odd to think that at the time of the migration the capacities that this tribe lacks were not present in the migrating population.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:36:00 +0000

Language Log is very aggressive about going after junk linguistics, and they don't just dismiss the Colapinto story. I plan to keep an ear open for more. Language Log's first piece Second Piece Third piece A more skeptical piece