Anathema: proof that evolution is real.
Anathema are an excellent, excellent band, always have been. But to listen to old albums like Serenades next to new ones like Weather Systems, it’s hard to imagine they have been the same band in any sense through it all. But they are equally good at the super heavy stuff like Lovelorn Rhapsody and the soft stuff like The Gathering of the Clouds. Don’t fear change; change can be totally awesome.
How South Sudan is exercising its linguistic right →
The people of South Sudan are pushing English over Arabic as their new preferred language at a national level. I’m sure linguists all over who follow the fear-English-encroachment philosophy are cringing at the thought. But, it also highlights an important distinction: A (fairly) large nation with a number of different regional indigenous languages choosing between two non-indigenous possible national languages is not the same as when a small nation/subnational group opts to replace their particular indigenous tongue with some larger foreign language with more political cache.
Of course, to support self-determination is to accept either of these decisions, but when a group like the Toda attempt to assimilate to a larger linguistic community, it certainly feels a lot worse than when the South Sudanese as a nation do so.
Ulver - Magic Hollow
I love Ulver. I love how they just do whatever they want musically and aesthetically and are kind of nuts.
The worst article you'll ever read about Pirahã →
People really have been dicks to Dan Everett, and that’s not cool. So I’ll focus here on the lazy, misinformed nonsense that is this particular article. Particularly, this paragraph:
For another thing, it shows how getting out into the field to live among speakers of human language makes a difference. This is no Chomsky-esque armchair theorizing; it’s immersive anthropology at work. Another fine example of this approach comes from Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson in their article on the “myth” of human linguistic universals.
Because, of course, no field linguist has ever been a generativist, and no formal linguist ever relies on any sort of primary empirical data.
And then there’s this:
The Pirahã language has what’s called “an evidence requirement.” Each utterance is marked, by means of a suffix on certain words, as how the information contained in that statement came to be known. … If you’re familiar with Noam Chomsky’s theorizing on language, you by now will have intuited that Everett’s data directly challenge it.
Because of course, evidentials could not possibly fit into any formalist or nativist model of language. No, never, preposterous.
Everett’s data must be dealt with by nativists, and preferably must be dealt with in a rational, reasonable way, as opposed to an attack on Everett personally. But the common functionalist arguments about this (and really, just about everything) are so facile, so smug, as to really be no more productive (though in fairness, more dignified than a lot of people on our side).
Long answer short: boo on you, Barbara King, for your smarmy, one-sided approach this issue.
Edit - Ms. King responded (albeit indirectly) to this post by pointing out the irony of a personal attack on her when I was criticizing personal attacks against Dan Everett. I concede this point and apologize if the tone here is a bit more heated than necessary.
I do not, however, retract any of the substance of the above. The imposed division between “armchair theorizing” by nativists and “immersive anthropology” by functionalists like Evans and Everett is unfair to the entire linguistic enterprise, per the links I provided above; and the taking of Everett’s views as the only (cited) word on what theory may say about his data is poor journalism.
I do not mean to drag Ms. King’s name through the mud. I know only this article by her, and my criticisms were meant to refer to it and nothing more. This debate needs better reporting, but it also needs more civility.
