Saltzman sez ...

I was talking to Elliot Saltzman today on the phone about our most recent IS group meeting, held on July 23, 2007. Elliot thinks that more attention should be devoted to exploring the underlying issues related to the readings of the meetings. The theme of the meeting was "The Pirahã Controversy." Readings included:

• Everett, D.L. (2005). Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language. Current Anthropology, August-October, 2005.
  
  
• Nevins, A., D. Pesetsky and C. Rodrigues (2007). Piraha Exceptionality: a Reassessment. lingBuzz.
  
  
• Everett, D.L. (2007). Cultural Constraints on Grammar in Pirahã: A Reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues. lingBuzz.

There were also other supplementary readings that are listed on the IS group website, which is maintained by Simon Levy.

Many, many issues went unexplored in the meeting. An example is recursion. One possibility for our next meeting would be a more detailed discussion of recursion. Possible readings might include the Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch vs. Pinker and Jackendoff series of papers:

• Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch. The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did it Evolve? Science 22 November 2002, Vol. 298, no. 5598, pp. 1569-1579.
  
  
• Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff (2005). The Faculty of Language: What's Special about it?Cognition, 95(2), 201-236.
  
  
• W. Tecumseh Fitch, Marc D. Hauser and Noam Chomsky. (2005). The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications. Cognition, 97, 179-210. (PDF format)
  
  
• An additional unpublished appendix : N. Chomsky, M. D. Hauser and W. T. Fitch. Appendix: The Minimalist Program. (PDF format)

An overview of this debate can be found on Language Log. Additional commentary can be found on the Mixing Memory blog.

Other possibilities include a recent paper by Michael Corballis, The Uniqueness of Human Recursive Thinking, American Scientist, Volume 95, No. 3, May-June 2007, 240-248.

We also did not have time to discuss Simon Levy's Becoming Recursive presentation from the Recursion in Human Languages Conference (RECHUL) , Illinois State University, 27 April 2007.

Let me know what you think about the idea of a more detailed discussion of the fundamentals, the particular topic mentioned above, and the suggested readings, by providing comments on this blog.