Wednesday, March 28, 2012
An ex-missionary might have turned linguistic theory on it's head
Daniel Everett went to live with an Amazonian tribe in the hopes of converting them to Christianity. He eventually learned their complex language, suffered from malaria, lost his faith, and he thought quite a bit about a theory made famous by the esteemed Noam Chomsky: Universal Grammar. Based on what he learned about the language of the Amazonian tribe, Everett has written a book in which he tries to refute this widely-held thesis. It's making some serious waves in philosophy and linguistics departments around the world. An article on Everett and his book can be found here.
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3 comments:
I love Eric Clapton. That is all.
This article is outrageous! This kind of crap happens in science all the time. Old, very well established theories are questioned and everyone gets their panties all in a bunch. Seems like Everett is just trying to make an interesting point about a unique culture, not spitefully smash Chomsky or his ideas. Its somewhat disheartening to see these very intelligent people be more concerned with staying on certain 'sides' rather than possibly learning new things.
Yes the article is outrageous, but mainly for how it misrepresented the facts. Read the comments below the article.
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