Folder: webmail-ic-2008-11-18/Voynich From stolfi@ic.unicamp.br Sun Mar 13 20:53:59 2005 Message-ID: <36341.143.106.23.232.1110758039.squirrel@webmail.ic.unicamp.br> In-Reply-To: <200503130400.j2D3xx7Y018654@pop2.alphalink.com.au> References: <200503130400.j2D3xx7Y018654@pop2.alphalink.com.au> Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:53:59 -0300 (BRT) Subject: Re: [Piraha] Re: I'll swap you... From: "Jorge Stolfi" To: jguy@alphalink.com.au Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said... FROM: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/press/newsarchive/title,3978,en.htm Tribe and tested theory (13 Oct, 2004) [...] Professor Everett and his wife have lived with the Piraha for up to six years at a time, and are the only two people in the world who speak their language. [...] This is an article written by a "science journalist", so naturally it has about one mistake per line. (They lived among the pirahã for a *total* of six years, in periods of a few months or so. We can only guess how much of that time was spent in some nearby brazilian town. It may be wrong about the "only two people in the world" bit, too. But if that is indeed the case, then... hmm... FROM: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001506.php Americans in their opinion are identified partially by their ability to speak other languages (since the only Americans they know are the only people they know that speak more than one language). Even so, it is difficult for them to grasp the fact that I can speak their language. They will often have conversations about me in front of me and then look astounded when I enter into the conversation --- even after all the years that I have worked there. When we go to villages that we haven't worked in much (i.e. other Piraha villages), they literally look at us with their mouths open in disbelief when we address them in Piraha. They eventually answer us, but the experience is clearly unsettling for them. (Everett, personal communication) You are right, this is looking disturbingly like another amazing hoax. It seems that the whole bibliography on the pirahã is limited to a couple dozen works by Everett, and a few more that take their data from him. His other great discovery, the Oro Win language, is spoken by only 40-50 members of the Wari tribe, and they all speak Wari also. Coincidentally both languages are VOS, even though they are unrelated. Now I do not know what to think of it. It seems unlikely that pirahã is a complete fabrication. If I had to pass judgement at this point, I would guess that Everett has only a very, very poor understanding of Pirahã, just enough for simple sentences; a very limited vocabulary, and very poor pronunciation. His grammar is probably good enough to pass simple tests by casual visitors, but parts of it may be faked or incorrect, and many "features" of pirahã may be in fact attempts by Everett to hide the gaping holes. Thus pirahã may have embedding, but Everett never mastered it. Or the indians learned that, when speaking to that dumb gringo, they had better use only the simplest phrases, like speaking to a toddler. The disbelief of his pirahã friends about his command of their language thus may have a very simple explanation. So does the confusion of the pirahã when asked (by the Everetts, presumably) to do Gordon's counting exercises, and their failure to learn counting in spite of intensive efforts by the Everetts. And so on... Presumably he felt pretty safe in 1983, when he cheated his way through the doctorate, as he expected the language to disappear in a few years. But not only it survived, its features attracted much unwanted attention; so he had to pile up lies and more lies to cover up his fraud. He may have bribed a few indians and locals, too. (After all, by the Whorfian theory, "a few" dollars would buy "a lot" of cooperation from the pirahã, right?) Everett's speech on lying, and his latest phonetic discovery, may be prankish clues that he is throwing us: "I see that the cat will be out of the bag at any moment, so I had better have fun with it while I can". At first I found it hard to believe that someone could progress through an university career while standing on such a fraud. But then I recalled Eric Thompson, the greatest authority on Maya script, who did not know the Maya language... I am looking up to the upcoming paper "Belated marking of untruthful statements by the tp~ phoneme in the Pirahã-OroWin-Basque family" by D. E. Evrett, K. Everett, and J. Krippendorf... All the best, --stolfi