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Posted: Sat Jun 23rd, 2007 03:12 pm

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Joe Kelley
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto?currentPage=all

Everett says that his earlier confusion arose over what’s known as the translation fallacy: the conviction that a word in one language is identical to a word in another, simply because, in some instances, they overlap in meaning.

Everett did not share this enthusiasm; in the ten years since he had introduced Gordon to the tribe, he had determined that the Pirahã have no fixed numbers. The word that he had long taken to mean “one” (hoi, on a falling tone) is used by the Pirahã to refer, more generally, to “a small size or amount,” and the word for “two” (hoi, on a rising tone) is often used to mean “a somewhat larger size or amount.” Everett says that his earlier confusion arose over what’s known as the translation fallacy: the conviction that a word in one language is identical to a word in another, simply because, in some instances, they overlap in meaning. Gordon had mentioned the elastic boundaries of the words for “one” and “two” in his paper, but in Everett’s opinion he had failed to explore the significance of the phenomenon. (Gordon disagrees, and for a brief period the two did not speak.)

Shortly after Gordon’s article appeared, Everett began outlining a paper correcting what he believed were Gordon’s errors. Its scope grew as Everett concluded that the Pirahã’s lack of numerals was part of a larger constellation of “gaps.” Over the course of three weeks, Everett wrote what would become his Cultural Anthropology article, twenty-five thousand words in which he advanced a novel explanation for the many mysteries that had bedevilled him. Inspired by Sapir’s cultural approach to language, he hypothesized that the tribe embodies a living-in-the-present ethos so powerful that it has affected every aspect of the people’s lives. Committed to an existence in which only observable experience is real, the Pirahã do not think, or speak, in abstractions—and thus do not use color terms, quantifiers, numbers, or myths. Everett pointed to the word xibipío as a clue to how the Pirahã perceive reality solely according to what exists within the boundaries of their direct experience—which Everett defined as anything that they can see and hear, or that someone living has seen and heard. “When someone walks around a bend in the river, the Pirahã say that the person has not simply gone away but xibipío—‘gone out of experience,’ ” Everett said. “They use the same phrase when a candle flame flickers. The light ‘goes in and out of experience.’ ”

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Posted: Sat Jun 23rd, 2007 04:38 pm

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Joe Kelley
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http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz

http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/@NFAksCsbKQURXhNZ/lYIyTqAS?246

http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/@NFAksCsbKQURXhNZ/lYIyTqAS?247

I am going to note here my thoughts on this question for review later on when my thoughts on this question are not as focused upon this question - understand?

Universal Grammar or UG, by Chomsky, is an observation of something real. UG is, according to the observation, is as much a reality as is the human heart. UG exists. The heart exists.

UG is the thing that people possess in their being that pumps laguage like the heart pumps blood.

If there is an argument against this observation, then, what will that argument contain?

Possible answer: Language

If there is an arguemtn against this observation, then, what will that argument use to pump that language?

Possible answer: Something rather than nothing.

What is the something?

There is the person, of course, who is arguing. The person is pumping the language. There is air being pumped. There is typed words being pumped.

How about getting right down to the very exact time that the argument begins being pumped?

What is that first thing that is being pumped and what pumps that very first thing being pumped.

This isn't that tough.

Choose one thing first. Choose the letter 't' for example.

The letter 't' just appeared back there in this sentence.

't'

There it is again.

There it is, here it is again - 't' - and so a form of language has been identified accurately and it came into being a few times already.

't'

There it is again.

How did it get pumped? It is real. It existed. It can exist again.

't'

See.

How does it get there? What pumps it out?

Dont give up. Progress has aready been made. An example of language has been identified (perhaps):

't'

How does it get there? I type it there. I use my fingers. I type now. I almost typed 't' again. I didn't type 't' again. I did type 't' again. I didn't type 't' alone.

't'

I did type 't' alone.

I didn't.

t

I did.

What pumps that 't' out? Obviously there must be something deciding to pump that 't' out. The brain does it. My brain does it. Does my brain do it on its own?

t

What pumped that t?

I did it. I decided to pump that t.

What are you deciding to do now? Your heart is pumping blood.

t

t

t

t

t

t

If you do not type t, if instead you go make a sandwitch, then, what will you use, what must you utilize, what is the thing that you must have and use to make the sandwitch or type a t?

I'm going to add a book reference and end this effort now with the final question.

What is left when all instinct is removed from a human beings being?

What would happen next?

http://www.amazon.com/Prescription-rebellion-Robert-Mitchell-Lindner/dp/0837180163

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