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<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style">I'm not sure that this is a true statement
"As our oral traditions are diminishing, so is the ability to grasp the skills
needed for passing on our languages." in that I don't believe that our "ability"
is tied to "oral tradition". Instead, I believe that our failure is based on the
refusal to understand the basic nature of words. First, they are references.
They are not the referent. Secondly, on the primary or basic level, nouns
and verbs are different from each other. They are processed in different parts
of the brain, are accompanied by different cognitive processes and different
kinesthetic responses. Thirdly, within a language, collections words are
processed into different levels of abstraction. And abstractions are culture
dependent. I believe that it is right here, at issues of abstraction, that
language-anything, preservation, revitalization, and understanding, all fail.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style">People jumped all over the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, without thinking it through. The mere fact that the deficit view
exists vis a vis language is a clear indication that people are still engaged in
wrong-making. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style">I am going to hazard the hypothesis that the
penalties for wrong-making are experienced and lived by its makers, for as
time passes, native technology speakers emerge. These tech languages serve
their function, and have their own meanings as do other human languages. But
they do not run away and hide as do some of the native languages. Instead,
they exist, and continue to thrive, and the penalties are
exclusion. Wrong-making excludes those who do it from understanding the
nature of the languages, and we are seeing all around us the failure of
tech-language immigrants to be successful at understanding and applying the new
technologies developed by the tech natives. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style">Daniel Wildcat said, in a presentation at
New Mexico State, that "the problem with Indian education is
the </FONT><FONT face="Bookman Old Style">problem with
education". I believe that this same principle applies: The problem with Indian
language learning and revitalization is the problem with language learning and
revitalization (including the tech languages)." </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style">Mia</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Bookman Old Style"></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mward@LUNA.CC.NM.US href="mailto:mward@LUNA.CC.NM.US">Matthew
Ward</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
href="mailto:ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU">ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, August 20, 2004 5:31
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Study of obscure Amazon
tribe sheds new light on how language affects perception (fwd)</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>No doubt, languages reflects the world view of the cultures
that use them. However, all languages must also function as practical
means of communication and survival--and all languages do in fact serve very
well in this way, in the context of the culture that the language is found in.
As cultures change, languages change with them, and although some things
are always lost, the fact remains that all languages represent a treasure
trove of shared cultural history--of not only the present, but the past as
well. <BR><BR>What a lot of people fail to grasp is the amazing
adaptability of the human language. As I said before, it's not difficult
for me to believe that some cultures have little need to do extensive
counting, and that their languages reflect this. What I DON'T believe is
that these people are imprisoned by their languages--that their languages, as
the article states lack the "right" linguistic resources. Those
resources can and will be developed as needed, even if it involves linguistic
borrowing, which is a perfectly natural and legitimate form of language
evolution. <BR><BR>The deficit view, which depends partially on denying
the adaptive quality of human language, and which is refuted by the vast
majority of research on language, in my experience is one of the biggest
enemies of language preservation. "They are all right in the bush, but
you can't possibly expect them to deal with the modern world." Nonsense,
I say. If the Israelis can take Hebrew from being a nearly dead
ceremonial language to the lingua franca of a fairly high-tech society, any
language community can do the same. There is no such thing as a
"primitive" language, no matter how dearly some people seem determined to
discover one. <BR><BR>Myra Shawaway wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid002201c486eb$7de654a0$1d40420a@ctwsdom.pri type="cite"><PRE wrap="">Interesting? the idea of having an exacting concept to numbers and time in
a scientific sense, has created difficulties in preservation of our
languages. As I work with our speakers of languages, I believe that the
concept of numbers is a seen thing, or sense of duty to cultural
environment, as is the sense of time when spoken about in past events that
have occured. As our oral traditions are diminishing, so is the ability to
grasp the skills needed for passing on our languages. We are moving from a
natural way of understanding needs and environment, to enjoying the comforts
of science and the outcomes.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Ward" <A class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E href="mailto:mward@LUNA.CC.NM.US"><mward@LUNA.CC.NM.US></A>
To: <A class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E href="mailto:ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU"><ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU></A>
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 7:02 AM
Subject: Re: Study of obscure Amazon tribe sheds new light on how language
affects perception (fwd)
</PRE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><PRE wrap="">I particularly like this sentence:
"What these experiments show, according to Gordon, is how having the
right linguistic resources can carve out one's reality."
The "right" lingustic resources, eh? I suppose that this study is seen as
</PRE></BLOCKQUOTE><PRE wrap=""><!---->evidence that some people just don't have the right stuff--gotta get those
Portuguese-speakers in there to right the situation.
</PRE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><PRE wrap="">I'm curious to see if, in 20 years, we are going to read an article
</PRE></BLOCKQUOTE><PRE wrap=""><!---->showing that the claims made about this tribe are about as accurate as
Whorf's claim that Hopi had no words for time...
</PRE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><PRE wrap="">
phil cash cash wrote:
</PRE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><PRE wrap="">Public release date: 19-Aug-2004
<A class=moz-txt-link-freetext href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-08/tccu-soo081804.php">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-08/tccu-soo081804.php</A>
Contact: Diane Dobry
<A class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated href="mailto:dd173@columbia.edu">dd173@columbia.edu</A>
212-678-3979
Teachers College, Columbia University
Study of obscure Amazon tribe sheds new light on how language affects
perception
Controversial linguistic hypothesis is supported by Teachers College
(Columbia University) professor's observation of tribe whose language
contains no words for numbers beyond 'one,' 'two' and 'many.'
During the late 1930s, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf posed the
theory that language can determine the nature and content of thought.
But are there concepts in one culture that people of another culture
simply cannot understand because their language has no words for it?
No one has ever definitively answered that question, but new findings by
Dr. Peter Gordon, a bio-behavioral scientist at Teachers College,
Columbia University, strongly support a "yes" answer. Gordon has spent
the past several years studying the Pirahã, an isolated Amazon tribe of
fewer than 200 people, whose language contains no words for numbers
beyond "one," "two" and "many." Even the Piraha word for "one" appears
to refer to "roughly one" or a small quantity, as opposed to the exact
connotation of singleness in other languages.
What these experiments show, according to Gordon, is how having the
right linguistic resources can carve out one's reality. "Whorf says
that language divides the world into different categories," Gordon
said. "Whether one language chooses to distinguish one thing versus
another affects how an individual perceives reality."
When given numerical tasks by Gordon in which they were asked to match
small sets of objects in varying configurations, adult members of the
tribe responded accurately with up to two or three items, but their
performance declined when challenged with eight to 10 items, and
dropped to zero with larger sets of objects. The only exception to this
performance was with tasks involving unevenly spaced objects. Here, the
performance of participants deteriorated as the number of items
increased to 6 items. Yet for sets of 7 to 10 objects, performance was
near perfect. Though these tasks were designed to be more difficult,
Gordon hypothesizes that the uneven spacing allowed subjects to
perceive the items as smaller "chunks" of 2 or 3 items that they could
then match to corresponding groups.
According to the study, performance by the Piraha was poor for set sizes
above 2 or 3, but it was not random. "Pirahã participants were actually
trying very hard to get the answers correct, and they clearly
understood the tasks," Gordon said. Participants showed evidence of
using methods of estimation and chunking to guess at quantities in
larger set sizes. On average, they performed about as well as college
students engaged in more complex numerical estimation tasks. Their
skill levels were similar to those in pre-linguistic infants, monkeys,
birds and rodents, and appeared to correlate to recent brain imaging
studies indicating a different sort of numerical competence that seems
to be immune to numerical language deprivation. Interestingly, Gordon
noted, while Pirahã adults had difficulty learning larger numbers,
Piraha children did not.
While the Pirahã words for "one" and "two" do not necessarily always
refer to those specific amounts, Gordon also found that members of the
tribe never used those words in combination to denote larger
quantities. In the study, they also used their fingers in addition to
their verbal statement of quantity, but this practice, too, was found
to be highly inaccurate even for small numbers less than five.
The Pirahã language has no word for "number," and pronouns do not
designate number--"he" and "they" are the same word. Most standard
quantifiers like "more," "several," "all," and "each" do not exist. In
general, while containing a very complex verb structure common to many
Native American languages, the Pirahã language does not allow for
certain kinds of comparative constructions. For example, it was not
possible to ask participants whether one group of objects "has more
nuts than the other" because of the lack of that construction in the
Pirahã grammar. Yet, the word they use for "many," which in that
language was derived from a form ob the verb meaning "to bring
together," is distinct from a word that means something like "much."
###
Details of the study will appear in the Thursday, August 19, issue of
the journal Science.
Teachers College is the largest graduate school of education in the
nation. Teachers College is affiliated with Columbia University, but it
is legally and financially independent. The editors of U.S. News and
World Report have ranked Teachers College as one of the leading
graduate schools of education in the country. For more information,
please visit the college's Web site at <A class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated href="http://www.tc.columbia.edu">www.tc.columbia.edu</A>.
</PRE></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE><PRE wrap=""><!---->
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