31 May
2010
31 May
'10
5:19 p.m.
On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 7:45 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
From: Chuck Guzis
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2010 9:26 AM
This intrigued me and I went straight off to read about it.
The Wikipedia article on Pirah? is pretty poor, but I've done lots of
digging on the fascinating Prof Dan Everett and the Pirah? people and
it's an intriguing story. Thanks for the pointer.
However, from Everett himself, the Pirah? have no numbers or counting
at all. They do have 1/2/many but Everett now reckons these are purely
relative assessments, not counting. 2 small fish are "h?i" (few,
because less) than one large fish ("ho?").
http://machineslikeus.com/interviews/machines-us-interviews-daniel-l-everet…
It's amazing. The language, he argues, even lacks recursion and thus
violates Chomsky's UG. Chomsky is thus infuriated and has disowned
Everett, who he calls a charlatan.
On 29 May 2010 at 7:28, dwight elvey wrote:
> Thing in the physical world are fraction of
powers of fractions.
> ?Decimal is just what you learned in school.
Exactly so! ?10 in the natural scheme of things,
other than being a
notational convenience for people using base ten is not terribly
useful other than being able to count on your fingers (the Mayans,
with their base twenty system, evidently used their toes as well).
There is a language in the Amazon Basin, I believe Pirah?, (and this is
not like the "1,2,many" urban legend--there are write-ups in linguistic
journals) which works in base 19. ?Each finger joint, the back of the
hand, the wrist, the forearm, the upper arm, and the shoulder are the
counting points. In human language, there is no such thing as "the
natural scheme of things".
Ain't that the truth...
--
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