Preserving Language Diversity: Lessons from Amazonia

1. Preserving Language Diversity: Lessons from Amazonia Simon D. Levy Computer Science Department Washington & Lee University Lexington, VA 24450 http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy First W&L/Petrobras Conference on the Environment, Economy, and Sustainable Development 22 June 2007

2. Outline • Biodiversity • Language Diversity • The case of Pirahã • Conclusions

3. I. Biodiversity

4. Rainforest Biodiversity • Greatest plant biodiversity is in rainforests: 170,000 of the world's 250,000 known plant species. • “We are trying to do biology knowing perhaps only a tenth, or one hundredth, of our species” – Terry Gosliner, National Geographic

5. Biodiversity and Pharmacology

6. II. Language Diversity: Sound and Sense

7. Language: A Window on the Mind • Reflects / affects how we think about the world • Amazing variety of ways of saying the “same thing” • Counter-intuitive constraints not derivable (?) from more general principles

8. Fallacies & Pitfalls • “Eskimo has over 100 words for snow.” • “Primitive” languages

9. Sound

10. Sound

11. Sound

12. Sound

13. Sound

14. Sense: Gender • English: (1) Masculine (2) Feminine • Dyirbal (Dixon 1979): (1) Animate objects, men (2) Women, water, fire, violence (3) Edible fruit and vegetables (4) Miscellaneous

15. Sense: Counting

16. Counting

17. Sense: Activity (Fillmore 1968) He ran away. Agent Agent Object She hit him. He felt sick. Object

18. O Activity A A he him O English

19. Activity A A O O Chinook

20. Activity A O A O Dakota (c.f. Spanish Me gusta, English Methinks)

21. Activity A A O O Takelma

22. So What Is Universal?(Human vs. Animal Language) • Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch, (2002): Recursion- the ability to combine words without limit: I enjoyed the Piatam conference. I told Jim that I enjoyed the Piatam conference. Laurence knew that I told Jim that I enjoyed the Piatam conference. etc. • I.e., every human language is infinite.

23. III. The Case of Pirahã

24. South American Languages

25. South American Languages

26. 300 languages: 20 families, 12 isolates

27. Pirahã

28. The Pirahã People • Remnant of Mura tribe (late 1700’s) • 150-200 hunter-gatherers living along the Maici River • Trade and reproduce • w/outsiders, but no interest in outsider language or culture

29. Pirahã Language & Culture (Everett 1979 … 2005)

30. Sound System But rich “suprasegmental” inventory (sung speech: )

31. Lexicon & Grammar • No color terms • No counting words • No recursion: I enjoyed the Piatam conference. I told Jim. Laurence knew it. • Huge controversy • A finite human language? • Culture influencing (determining?) language: “Immediacy of Experience Principle”

32. IV. Conclusions

33. Threats to Glossodiversity • “Of the more than 6,000 languages currently being spoken, fewer than half are likely to survive the [21st] century” – Douglas Whalen, Endangered Language Fund • Appears to correlate with biodiversity (Manne 2003) • The languages most likely to give us new insights are the ones that are most endangered.

34. Each language in this sense, while sharing cognitive and communicative principles in common with all other languages spoken by Homo sapiens, is unique. This is why it is such a tragedy when a language dies — we don't just lose a grammar. We lose an entire way of thinking and talking about the world; we lose a set of solutions to the problems that beset us all as humans. - D. L. Everett

35. Links • RECURSION AND HUMAN THOUGHT: WHY THE PIRAHÃ DON'T HAVE NUMBERS: A Talk With Daniel L. Everett http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge213.html#everett • Endangered Language Fund: http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org