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Pirahã Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6398 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 1 of 5 08 August 2007 at 4:50am | IP Logged |
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Hello Everyone,
This is my first posting to the group. My apologies, if this topic has been discussed earlier in this forum, and I have missed it. There was a fascinating article in the April issue of The New Yorker about a language spoken by an Amazonian tribe called Pirahã. The main idea of the article is to stake a claim that Pirahã undermines Noam Chomsky’s idea of a universal grammar. Here is a link to the article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_ colapinto I am looking for audio recordings with some samples of the Pirahã, and am wondering if anyone on this list has come across likely places to look for those. Enjoy the article, and thank you in advance for any ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6512 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 5 08 August 2007 at 5:40am | IP Logged |
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I have also read some of the replies to that article, where it is stated that Everett has misrepresented the features of the language he has studied for 30 years.
The 'war' is described in an entertaining manner in this blog. I have seen a super scientific refutation of Everett in Chomskian terms, but I don't know the lingo well enough to really understand the arguments. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| breckes Triglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6608 days ago 84 posts - 89 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian Studies: Italian, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 5 08 August 2007 at 5:52am | IP Logged |
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There has been also a lot of discussion at the Language Log.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6577 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 5 08 August 2007 at 6:44am | IP Logged |
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I must say, I laughed out loud with amazement when I read about Pirahã phonology a few months ago. This language is strange in every way — although it has only a small set of phonemes, it has two of the rarest sounds known to linguistics:
- the lateral alveolar-linguolabial double flap, found in no other language but Pirahã - a voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate, found only in two other unrelated Indian languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6398 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 5 of 5 09 August 2007 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you very much to everyone for your comments. The Language Log site eventually leads one to a URL with some audio files and the accompanying spectrograms: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003175.h tml. Much appreciated! Varia.
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