Daniel L. Everett

Arrows, Pizza, and Language: Grammar as a Cultural Tool

One hears of language as innate or as instinctual so frequently these days that it might be surprising to hear that there are many researchers who think that it is nothing of the kind. There are various alternative views of the nature of human language, ranging from the 'language as emergent property' perspective of Brian Macwhinney and others to my own view that language is a tool. In this paper I make a case, based largely on my own Amazonian field research among the Pirahas and others, that language rests on six preconditions: Platform, Society, Intentionality, Cognition, Culture, and Communication. Once these conditions are met, language emerges naturally, to be shaped like a tool by the culture in which it develops. Like a tool it can vary widely, parts of it can be lost (perhaps most of it in some cases), and it fits the needs of its own culture better than it fits the needs of other cultures. This research is developed in a series of articles and two books, the newly published, Don't sleep, there are snakes and another in progress, to appear in 2010.