41–50 of 54 posts
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So orange wouldn't be counted as a colour in English? I'm not sure what value there is in measuring the amount of colour names in a language based purely on their etymology.
Orange wouldn't. By this logic, many oddities in color naming can be abstracted over languages, see for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Univer...
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I left the house with David, Susan, Steve, Kate, Alice, and George. I still have David, Susan, Steve, Kate, Alice, and George, so I can't have left any behind. I've got issues with a lot of (Dan) Everett's work, but you don't need counting to handle that scenario.
You've now got to remember all of the kids' individual names (and hope that you haven't got a somewhat largish amount of John Smiths in your group), rather than remembering "I had 6. I've still got 6". It's also even more of a challenge when the things you've got to remember aren't easily individually identified - a flock of sheep or apples or whatever.
After all, you remember your parents' names, and your grandparents' names, and probably your uncle and aunts' names.
If you went on vacation with them, would you count your family members at the start and end of the plane ride, or would you just look around, and think, "Marina, Richard, Victor and Mila, Irina and Alex - okay, everyone's here!"
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"How many children/pigs/dogs are in the house? Did we forget any?"
Yeah, or alternatively how many wolves are approaching? It seems like it would be advantageous to be able to communicate whether 5 or 50.
I use a language has no numbers every day (Bash).
for x in {0..3}; do echo $x; doneEarlier quoted context omitted.
I left the house with David, Susan, Steve, Kate, Alice, and George. I still have David, Susan, Steve, Kate, Alice, and George, so I can't have left any behind. I've got issues with a lot of (Dan) Everett's work, but you don't need counting to handle that scenario.
You've now got to remember all of the kids' individual names (and hope that you haven't got a somewhat largish amount of John Smiths in your group), rather than remembering "I had 6. I've still got 6". It's also even more of a challenge when the things you've got to remember aren't easily individually identified - a flock of sheep or apples or whatever.
You're applying your numerate bias here. I have no idea if that's how the Pirāha handle the situation, but it's certainly plausible. Perhaps their memory for this kind of thing is better than yours because they've relied on it for cases where you'd just keep track of a number.
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You've now got to remember all of the kids' individual names (and hope that you haven't got a somewhat largish amount of John Smiths in your group), rather than remembering "I had 6. I've still got 6". It's also even more of a challenge when the things you've got to remember aren't easily individually identified - a flock of sheep or apples or whatever.
It's not that hard to remember individuals' names, when there aren't all that many of them in your society to begin with, and you've known them all your life. After all, you remember your parents' names, and your grandparents' names, and probably your uncle and aunts' names. If you went on vacation with them, would you count your family members at the start and end of the plane ride, or would you just look around, an…
What it doesn't address though, is my second point - things that don't have unique names. Remembering how many sheep you took out to the field, how many bowls you tooks with you to eat, how many pieces of wood you need to cut in order to fix up your wall etc.
Clearly they have managed to find a way to cope without needing these numbers, but I'm not sure that I buy the idea that they wouldn't regularly come across situations where having numbers would have made their lives simpler.
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I've seen somewhere a test for how many color words are there in the language - only color-words which do not correspond to a specific material or plant which color is emulated are accepted. So “red” or “blue” is fine, as is “piros” or “vörös” - but “sky blue” (color of sky), “ruby” (color of the gemstone) or “scarlet” (color of the Scarlet cloth) are not.
So orange wouldn't be counted as a colour in English? I'm not sure what value there is in measuring the amount of colour names in a language based purely on their etymology.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that hard to remember individuals' names, when there aren't all that many of them in your society to begin with, and you've known them all your life. After all, you remember your parents' names, and your grandparents' names, and probably your uncle and aunts' names. If you went on vacation with them, would you count your family members at the start and end of the plane ride, or would you just look around, an…
Actually I struggle pretty badly with names - I have honestly forgotten my wife's name in the past - so I'd probably still go for counting people even if they were in my own family. But I get your point. What it doesn't address though, is my second point - things that don't have unique names. Remembering how many sheep you took out to the field, how many bowls you tooks with you to eat, how many pieces of wood you ne…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that hard to remember individuals' names, when there aren't all that many of them in your society to begin with, and you've known them all your life. After all, you remember your parents' names, and your grandparents' names, and probably your uncle and aunts' names. If you went on vacation with them, would you count your family members at the start and end of the plane ride, or would you just look around, an…
Actually I struggle pretty badly with names - I have honestly forgotten my wife's name in the past - so I'd probably still go for counting people even if they were in my own family. But I get your point. What it doesn't address though, is my second point - things that don't have unique names. Remembering how many sheep you took out to the field, how many bowls you tooks with you to eat, how many pieces of wood you ne…
I don't know much about primitive tribes in the amazon, but I don't imagine that their traditional lifestyle involves very large flocks of sheep.
My family bred dogs growing up so we always had a good number (~10) running around. When I let them out and in, I don't recall ever counting but rather ticking off names. Even then I don't think it was generally a conscious listing, but rather a scanning and the ability to "feel" that someone was missing.
For a very long time (well into adulthood) I had no concept of the proper order of the months. I could recognize month names, and with great difficulty name them all...but not their proper order. I had missed that section in school and it never really came up. When it did it really blew peoples minds for some reason. Eventually, I did come across it enough that I learned it.
I know nothing of the tribe in question but I don't think it's that much of a stretch that if they have things like a communal attitude towards property, few pieces of property they consider valuable, small flocks of livestock, etc... the issue may simply never come up.
Oh Gawd... Read: http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/pesetsky/Nevin... Edit: and sure this is the Chomskians debunking the "upstart" Danial Everett but this is thorough, clear and convincing in contrast to the haphazard novelty that most Piraha discussion involves. A language with future? How...? Well, actually the answer would be just no, that's not how it works. And sure, this headline says "number" but a…
Like I said earlier, it all sounds a little too perfect. Unpolluted by outside contact (because they refuse to learn a language that can't be whistled), the Piraha have no need for past, future, creation myths, kinship systems beyond the first degree, numbers, and so on. It's a dream of what we might be like if we were freed of our corrupt culture.
Is Everett an heir to Margaret Meade?