Preserving Language Diversity: Lessons from Amazonia

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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 WL/Petrobras Conference on the
Environment, Economy, and Sustainable
Development 22 June 2007
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Outline

• Biodiversity
• Language Diversity
• The case of Pirahã
• Conclusions

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• I. Biodiversity

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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

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Biodiversity and Pharmacology
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• II. Language Diversity Sound and Sense

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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

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Fallacies Pitfalls

• Eskimo has over 100 words for snow.

• Primitive languages

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Sound
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Sound
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Sound
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Sound
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Sound
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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

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Sense Counting
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Counting
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Sense Activity (Fillmore 1968)
He ran away.
Agent
Agent Object
She hit him.
He felt sick.
Object
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Activity
A
A
he
him
O
English
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Activity
A
A
O
O
Chinook
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Activity
A
O
A
O
Dakota
(c.f. Spanish Me gusta, English Methinks)
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Activity
A
A
O
O
Takelma
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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.

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• III. The Case of Pirahã

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South American Languages
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South American Languages
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300 languages 20 families, 12 isolates
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Pirahã
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The Pirahã People

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

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Pirahã Language Culture (Everett 1979 2005)
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Sound System
But rich suprasegmental inventory (sung
speech )
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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

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• IV. Conclusions

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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.

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• 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

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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
  .htmleverett
• Endangered Language Fund
  http//www.endangeredlanguagefund.org