On Everett & Piraha: "history holds the key"

[Daniel L. Everett]

I happily accept Esa's admonishment and judgements.

Dan


On Apr 23, 2007, at 9:14 AM, Esa Itkonen wrote:

> Dear Friends: On Funknet, in the mid and late 90's, I had some  
> delightful discussions with Dan Everett concerning the relative  
> weaknesses and strengths of generativism. When speaking of my then- 
> forthcoming article 'Concerning the generative paradigm' (Journal  
> of Pragmatics 1996, 471-501) I remember saying, among other things,  
> that "history holds the key" for properly understanding the nature  
> of the current situation. "His brow in deep furrows", Dan  
> responded: "I don't understand." By now, however,  it has become  
> evident that he does understand. As much is evident from the New  
> Yorker article (April 2007) where he declares that, having in the  
> late 90's discovered Edward Sapir, the long-forgotten genius of  
> American linguistics, he now understands that it will take 20 years  
> to for us to get out of the hole that Chomsky has dug. Surely he  
> would have reached this insight earlier if, instead of going  
> directly from SIL to MIT, he had devoted some time to history (of  
> linguistics) whic
> h indeed seems to hold the key.
>
> Esa
>
> P.S. The point of my 1996 paper (arrived at, literally, on the last  
> page) was anticipated by Dell Hymes & John Fought on p. 242 of  
> their book  American Structuralism (Mouton, 1981 [1975]). In  
> another context (= p. 160) they quote the following perceptive  
> remark: "You can't fight arrogance with humility."
>
>

**********************
Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics, Anthropology, and  
Biological Sciences
and

Chair,
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
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Illinois State University
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OFFICE: 309-438-3604
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Honorary Professor of Linguistics
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
***********
“The notion that the essence of what it means to be human is most  
clearly revealed in those features of human culture that are  
universal rather than in those that are distinctive to this people or  
that is a prejudice that we are not obliged to share... It may be in  
the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that  
some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be  
generically human are to be found.” Clifford Geertz (1926-2006)