Shorter Excerpts (From A Work In Progress)

Culture, Not Biology, Shapes Human Language

mindbabies:

leftist-linguaphile:

There’s no language gene.

There’s no innate language organ or module in the human brain dedicated to the production of grammatical language.

There are no meaningful human universals when it comes to how people construct sentences to communicate with each other. Across the languages of the world (estimated to number 6,000-8,000), nouns, verbs, and objects are arranged in sentences in different ways as people express their thoughts. The powerful force behind this variability is culture.

reblogging so I can read later.

Same.

Nice bit of synchronicity seeing this pop up on my dash, as I’ve also been reading up on linguistic relativism and Constructivism (learning theory) this week.

(Source: azspot, via mindbabie5-deactivated20120604)

  1. roisin-dubh reblogged this from justicespank
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  3. the-cogitator reblogged this from azspot and added:
    I haven’t read the book in question, but this is shear nonsense. Yes, language is culturally transmitted, but without...
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    Daniel Everett, while a very smart guy with a keen eye for interesting science, has been barking up the Piraha Indian...
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