Re: Sapir-WhorFreakiness

And írta: "As for John's suggestion of SLI, it is very interesting, but I
wonder why Everett's own explanation is so hard to swallow, given that there
are so few Piraha (200 odd) and their culture is so isolationist and
unenterprising. There is a resistance to innovation and sophistication, and
few potential sources of innovation. If an embeddingless language meets
their communicative needs, as it evidently does, there would be no pressure
for the language to evolve embedding."

This thread is very interesting; I think And is correct (his proposition
above is the best I've seen thus far, although Mark's conspiracy theory is
always possible, but seems implausible if Everet lived with the Pirahã for
six years). And's theory would explain the lack of (e.g.) colours and
numbers: the speakers of Pirahã just don't need them. After all, they live
in the jungle, or near to it at least, right? Has anyone been to the Amazon
on this list or seen pictures? What's it look like there? Dark? I expect the
trees block out the sunlight, so it would be hard to see colours. Maybe that
would explain it. But then, do any other Amazonianlangs lack colour terms
too?

... OTOH, the lack of complex numbers is intriguing; I can't think of a good
explanation for their absence...