Evo
Aug22-04, 01:57 PM
Marcus, you mentioned an interest in linguistics. I wonder what your neighbor would think about this. I have been interested for some time in tribal cultures in South America and New Guinea. This tribe, the Piraha, is the most unusual I have come across.
I'd like to know what you and others think about this. Does their culture prevent them from learning?
The first is an article giving a brief overview of the tribe. The second (PDF) covers their language and culture.
Rueters
"Members of a tiny, isolated Brazilian tribe have no words for numbers other than "one or a few" or "many" and seem to have trouble counting, the researchers reported.
The Piraha tribespeople are clearly intelligent, so the finding opens questions into how language may affect thinking, the researchers say in this week's issue of the journal Science."
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=6023199§ion=news
The Piraha language challenges simplistic application of Hockett’s (1960) nearly universally-accepted “design features of human language”, by showing that some of these design features (interchangeability, displacement and productivity) may be culturally constrained. In particular Piraha culture constrains communication to non-abstract subjects which fall within the immediate experience of interlocutors. This constraint explains several very surprising features of Piraha grammar and culture:
1) The absence of creation myths and fiction
2) The simplest kinship system yet documented
3) The absence of numbers of any kind or a concept of counting
4) The absence of color systems
5) The absence of embedding in the grammar
6) The absence of “relative tenses”
7) The borrowing of its entire pronoun inventory from Tupi
8) The fact that the Piraha are monolingual after more than 200 years of regular contact with Brazilians and the Tupi-Guarani-speaking Kawahiv
9) The absence of any individual or collective memory of more than two generations past
10) The absence of drawing or other art and one of the simplest material cultures yet documented
11) The absence of any terms for quantification, e.g. “all”, “each”, “every”, “most”, “some”, etc…
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Info/staff/DE/cultgram.pdf
I'd like to know what you and others think about this. Does their culture prevent them from learning?
The first is an article giving a brief overview of the tribe. The second (PDF) covers their language and culture.
Rueters
"Members of a tiny, isolated Brazilian tribe have no words for numbers other than "one or a few" or "many" and seem to have trouble counting, the researchers reported.
The Piraha tribespeople are clearly intelligent, so the finding opens questions into how language may affect thinking, the researchers say in this week's issue of the journal Science."
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=6023199§ion=news
The Piraha language challenges simplistic application of Hockett’s (1960) nearly universally-accepted “design features of human language”, by showing that some of these design features (interchangeability, displacement and productivity) may be culturally constrained. In particular Piraha culture constrains communication to non-abstract subjects which fall within the immediate experience of interlocutors. This constraint explains several very surprising features of Piraha grammar and culture:
1) The absence of creation myths and fiction
2) The simplest kinship system yet documented
3) The absence of numbers of any kind or a concept of counting
4) The absence of color systems
5) The absence of embedding in the grammar
6) The absence of “relative tenses”
7) The borrowing of its entire pronoun inventory from Tupi
8) The fact that the Piraha are monolingual after more than 200 years of regular contact with Brazilians and the Tupi-Guarani-speaking Kawahiv
9) The absence of any individual or collective memory of more than two generations past
10) The absence of drawing or other art and one of the simplest material cultures yet documented
11) The absence of any terms for quantification, e.g. “all”, “each”, “every”, “most”, “some”, etc…
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Info/staff/DE/cultgram.pdf