The Pirahã Controversy — Part 1

Mar 21, 2012 by

The Pirahã Controversy — Part 1

Two articles have recently appeared in the popular press addressing the so-called Pirahã controversy, one in The Economist and another in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The authors of these two pieces, especially Tom Bartlett,...

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More on "telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the t...

Nov 9, 2011 by

[thanks to Olga Kagan, Martin W. Lewis and Vitaliy Rayz for helpful discussions of various issues covered in this post] In a series of earlier posts, I discussed the issue of “telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but...

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Telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Nov 1, 2011 by

A couple of articles in the latest edition of The Economist warn us about new technology currently researched that will be able to read what people are thinking (see here and here). One of the main implication of such technology that...

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Amateurish linguistics — why?

Jan 21, 2011 by

Andrei Zalizniak’s lecture, to which I’ve posted a link, discusses the so-called “amateurish linguistics”, the pursuit focused mostly on “discovering” (in fact, making up) whimsical and...

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Does language reflect/affect thought?

Jan 20, 2011 by

In a recent online debate at The Economist a question was raised as to whether the language we speak shapes how we think. Lera Boroditsky of Stanford University argued for the “pro” position, while Mark Liberman of the...

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