Abstract
This paper discusses Everett’s (Curr Anthropol 46(4):621–646, 2005) claim that Pirahã lacks words for the existential and the universal quantifiers. Everett bases his argument on his analysis of the word báasio (the prima facie universal quantifier in Pirahã) in an example in which the word is used when the main part of an object or set is concerned rather than the whole. This, or so Everett claims, would be dishonest, given the norms of language use, if báasio meant all. According to him, this is enough to show that báasio cannot be the universal quantifier. However, Everett’s argument entirely neglects the possibility that in such a case báasio could be used non-literally (in an hyperbolic way), just as all can be in English. I conclude that Everett fails to show that báasio is not the universal quantifier in Pirahã.
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Notes
- 1.
Radical translation is illustrated by the following situation: a linguist (by which Quine meant a field linguist) is dropped in a tribe where the language spoken has never been described before and for which there is no interpreter. In other words, the linguist has to understand what he is told without any reliance on semantic equivalences between this language and a known language and without the means to ask questions. Basically, she finds herself without any resources apart from the speakers’ utterances and the situations in which they are produced. Interestingly, according to Everett (2008), this was precisely his situation when he first went to the Pirahãs.
- 2.
He probably would not agree anymore than I do with meaning skepticism, even when limited in this way, though.
- 3.
As we will see, he does not even discuss the existence of the other quantifiers, apparently thinking that the (supposed) non-existence of the universal quantifier naturally extends to the other quantifiers.
- 4.
I should point out that, since then, various comments (see, e.g., Watumull et al. 2014) have pointed out that the hypothesis proposed by Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch did not imply that all languages would be recursive, merely that recursion was a central feature of language (vs. of languages). Whether this is right or not is immaterial to the present paper. But Everett’s claim was the operational factor in his overnight fame.
- 5.
And with which I strongly disagree for reasons that are not without relevance to the present paper (Reboul forthcoming).
- 6.
Also called pragmatic intrusion, in Levinson (2000).
- 7.
Note that the fact that norms enjoining the speaker to use words only in their conventional meaning are implausible does not mean that in tropes or in loose use, conventional meaning does not have a role to play (for a discussion, centering on metaphor, see Reboul 2014).
- 8.
Also known as linguistic relativism.
- 9.
For a discussion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the domain of color (concluding that it enjoys support only on a trivial reading), see Reboul (2015).
- 10.
It should be noted that Whorf played a less than savory role in the birth of the Great Eskimo Hoax, having apparently failed to see that, if anything, it contradicts rather than supports linguistic relativity (the causal direction—from environment to culture—is the reverse of what it is in linguistic relativity).
- 11.
As well as the poverty of the Pirahã culture, described by Everett as lacking creation myths and rituals, and as extremely restricted in technology.
- 12.
- 13.
As said above, given that Everett’s description is imprecise, we cannot be sure.
- 14.
It should be pointed out that it is not clear how weak effability could apply to quantities in a language such as Pirahā that (truly) lacks cardinals: how can you say that the boy has shot all his arrows when you have neither quantifiers nor cardinals?
- 15.
Though that is debatable, see Reboul (2012).
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Reboul, A. (2017). A Pragmatic and Philosophical Examination of Everett’s Claims About Pirahã. In: Blochowiak, J., Grisot, C., Durrleman, S., Laenzlinger, C. (eds) Formal Models in the Study of Language. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48832-5_6
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