Daniel Everett on the Nature of Languag

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2010

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Since John Locke declared the child's mind a blank slate, philosophers have long debated the degree to which language-learning is innate. Are there are universal grammatical features that all languages share? Daniel Everett, who has spent many years among the Piraha, an Amazonian people who have a highly unusual language, believes that some of Noam Chomsky's claims about language acquisition are mistaken. Listen to him discussing the nature of language with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in association with The Institute of Philosophy

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is made
0:03.0	philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warberton.
0:07.0	Philosophy bites is available at
0:09.0	www
0:10.0	philosophy bites dot com.
0:12.0	Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
0:16.0	There is now a Philosophy Bites book published by Oxford University Press.
0:20.0	More information is available on our website.
0:23.0	Almost all humans have the capacity to learn language.
0:27.0	Whether the first language they're exposed to is Mandarin, Swahili, Hungarian or English.
0:32.0	For the past half a century, a... Swahili, Hungarian or English.
0:33.3	For the past half a century, a dominant notion in linguistics has been that languages, however
0:38.4	different they appear on the surface, share some kind of deep universal grammar, and that the human brain is wired to follow particular linguistic rules.
0:47.0	These ideas are associated with the key figure in modern linguistics,
0:52.8	Nome Chomsky, whose pioneering work was carried out at MIT.
0:57.6	But Dan Everett thinks Chomsky got it wrong.
1:00.5	He spent years in the jungle
1:02.2	with an isolated group of Amazonian Indians.
1:05.0	Dan Everett, welcome to Philosophy Bites.
1:08.0	Thank you. It's really good to be with you.
1:10.0	The topic we're going to focus on is the nature of language.
1:14.0	Now you've got a special empirical knowledge of a particular language.
	...

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