Language: The Cultural Tool

Two themes run through the book:1. Language is a complex cultural tool whuch began early in human evolution, before homo sapiens, maybe as early as the discovery of fire.2. Chomsky is wrong when he suggests a more recent (and rapid) evolution of language.The evolution of spoken language is necessarily a social phenomenon requiring simultaneous advancements in the creation and interpretation of sounds. Everett successfully argues that the cultural context of language is essential to the understanding of the evolution of human language.

Everett's book, recommended to me by a MacArthur winner whose brain I was luckily in a position to pick, has helped me sort out a question that has been on my mind ever since Noam Chomsky first gave me a fishy feeling many years ago. When science has not (or not yet) reached the point of being able to provide individual features of language with detailed brain localizations that they do not also share with other, non-language faculties, the Chomskyan notion that we are all born with a species-wide "deep structure" that enables every healthy baby to "master" any native language must be entertained with some skepticism. For openers, apropos of "mastery," it should be obvious that not every native speaker of English who survives childhood has become a Shakespeare. Everett thinks that hominid cultures, already diverse, evolved a need for language before pharynxes lengthened, mouths shortened, and brains grew to permit hums and grunts to gain extra usefulness and become uniquely and differently articulated individual languages. Trained as a field linguist, Everett insists that whatever obscure and general similarities philosophy may find among our languages, it is the myriad differences between them that must be obvious to common sense. In addition to his expertise, Everett is a colloquial "good read" who can make you laugh out loud. This is a very important book about what makes us human.

Daniel Everett returns to the theme he raised in his previous Don't sleep, there are Snakes about his experience working with the Parahã, the Amazonian population he worked with while doing missionary work as an SIL worker. In his previous book, he argues that the population he worked with exhibit a language devoid of many of the parameters of most of the world's language. If indeed Dr. Everett has done his analysis well, and there's little to suggest otherwise, we can all agree that the Parahã have a remarkable "stripped down to the basics" language.However, when Dr. Everett tries to build his case against the existence of universal Grammar (UG) as set forth by Noam Chomsky and offer the standard "cogntive" model eschewing not only an innate language function but the modules from which these structures arise, he steps into a world in which reveals some serious misunderstanding. He builds on a shaky sense of what "culture" is, misuses the notions of Peirce and De Saussure and reveals a very loose grasp of both natural selection and its cultural counterpart. The result is that comes up with the same old tired model of children acquiring language through "usage" as do Tomasello, Taylor and others of the cognitive school. So, no surprise here. More old wine in a shiny new bottle.Dr. Everett has put a lot of effort into this work which, alas, falls short because he never successfully tells us what technology is and how it's integrated with language as part of a general theory of mind. He would do well to not regal us with amusing and interesting stories about the several scholars he quotes and reread what they had to say. He's unfamiliar with Chomsky and Berwick's clearest statement to date on UG and would do well to read Eric Lenneberg's 1973 Biological Foundations of Language and SJ Gould on cultural evolution. He's a bright guy who likely knows more about Amazonian Native American languages than anyone around today, but this work falls short of being more than an entertaining read.

One important book for me. The author not only knows his stuff, he knows how to get his point across in an engaging and entertaining way. My suggestion is to read his earlier work"Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle"I did and found I had an easier time following along with his examples.I can't heap enough praise on this guy.And no we're not pals or connected in any fashion other than we share the planet. Check out his latest book.He will change your thinking...about your thinking.

The book lays out a well reasoned argument against Chomsky's nativist universal grammars based on the authors extensive study of the languages of primitive populations in South America. The book explores the claims of anatomical features of the brain that would have "housed" a language organ. It discusses the linguistic features that are claimed to be universal, but in fact are shown to be missing in some of the languages studied by the author. The book written to a more general audience and is a pleasant read.

I read this book after reading Daniel L. Everett book "Don't sleep there are sneaks" about his experience with the Pirañas on the Amaziona Jungle. On that book an on this onw more enforcebly he points out that culture enforces the language of every community. It's a great thesis about how reality is build by the culture or by the language, better, by the knotty relation between those two concepts, languagem and culture.If you are interested in that matter you should read it!I hope you enjoy

The author's years learning Amazonian Indian languages give him a unique perspective on language - although this book covers a lot of linguistic topics. I can't fault his explanation of language as a tool, rooted in our compulsion to communicate, and what follows from this view.

Perhaps my expectations were set too high, but "Language: The Cultural Tool" is written in a disappointingly simple way, aimed at people with little understanding of linguistics. The author often digresses and explains basic concepts at great length, while examples of utterances in Pirahã are not sufficiently analysed.For instance, the example of three Pirahã sentences (?) that were supposed to show that Pirahã sentences are not recursive seems to contradict this very assumption, as each of the units the author considers a separate sentence indicates that the following unit is indirect speech in a different way, as if showing different layers of embedding for the final unit, which could just as well mean that the whole structure either is a sentence or is analogous to one, and that recursion does exist in Pirahã.The author tries to prove that there is no universal grammar by showing how different (from English) the languages spoken by tribes living in the rainforest are. However, the sentences used as examples are translated literally and their structure is not sufficiently analysed. The author's ignorance of analogy, inability to consistently operate on the same concepts, amazement at morphology that is common in many widely used modern languages and presentation of any differences from English grammar as something very exotic made me very sceptical about the validity of his theories and analysis of the Pirahã language.

As an anthropological linguist, the hype about this “revolutionary” book encouraged me to buy it. I have always hated the arm-chair “universal grammar” of the Chomskyan variety and always rejected “language as instinct” thesis in favour of “language as a cultural tool” and “language as social semiotic” theses. Some linguists have done excellent work to prove that there are no absolute linguistic universals, but Everett is not one of them. This book is disappointingly basic. Everett’s analysis of the Pirahã syntax is so basic and shallow that one starts doubting his central argument that there is no recursion in Pirahã syntax. There is interesting information about the culture of the Pirahã-speaking community and about the male and female speakers having slightly different phonological systems. But still as a linguist I find the book highly disappointing.

Daniel Everett manages to give a very entertaining explanation of the realtionship of language and culture. You should read first "Don't sleep there are snakes"

Quite an interesting book, presenting the most prominent linguistic theories as well as the very peculiar culture and language of the Amazonian tribes the author had the chance to study and live with. If you had any doubt, you'll find here convincing arguments and evidence of the nature of human language as a very powerful cultural tool.