preserving language diversity: lessons from amazonia simon d. levy computer science department...
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Preserving Language Diversity: Lessons
from Amazonia
Preserving Language Diversity: Lessons
from AmazoniaSimon D. Levy
Computer Science DepartmentWashington & Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy
Simon D. LevyComputer Science DepartmentWashington & Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy
First W&L/Petrobras Conference on the Environment, Economy, and
Sustainable Development22 June 2007
First W&L/Petrobras Conference on the Environment, Economy, and
Sustainable Development22 June 2007
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
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
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
Counting
Quantity !Kung Warlmanpa Portuguese English French
1
r|e'e jinta um / pimeiro one / first un / premier
2
tsã jirrama dois / segundo two / second deux / deuxième
3
n!eni três / terceiro three / third trois / troisième
4
quatro / quarto four / fourth
quatre / quatrième
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.
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
Sound System
But rich “suprasegmental” inventory (sung speech: )
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”
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.
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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