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Blog: Dark Matter of the Mind

• The logical issue of claims of recursionJune 19, 2019 - 1:46 pm

  Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) claimed that recursion is the fundamental basis for language, the sole member of the FLN (Narrow Faculty of Language): “We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language.” In Everett (2005), however, I argued that the Piraha language of Brazil […]

• Thoughts on DiversityJune 26, 2017 - 12:21 pm

  My newest article appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on April 30, 2017.  “In a Pirahã village along the Maici River in Brazil, I squeezed mustard onto a piece of bread. An old woman from the village watched me. “Why do you eat bird shit?,” she asked. There was irritation in her voice. Then […]

• Translation for an interesting Piraha textMarch 6, 2017 - 6:10 pm

  Sept. 29 A MFX3 (younger guy) 0001C6.MP4 00:00:17 Ti baabihia saagoai ‘Am I getting ill?’ (joking comment made by Kaiowa to himself as he waits) 00:00:25 Dan to Kaiowa: Baihiigi ‘(taping) goes slowly’ Kaiowa to Dan: Xai baihiigi. Xaio. ‘Yeah. Slowly. That’s right.’

• A discussion of “Understanding Recursion and Looking for Self-Embedding in Pirahã”December 19, 2016 - 1:52 pm

  A discussion of Understanding Recursion and Looking for Self-Embedding in Pirahã, by Raiane Oliveira Salles, Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/26480/26480.PDF In the decades since I began field research on the Pirahã language, in December of 1977, 39 years ago, no one else has done any descriptive linguistics field research on this language. Brazilian […]