On Cultural Constraints on Pirahã Grammar

In commentary on Daniel L. Everett's "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Piraha" (Current Anthropology, 2005, 46, 621-646), arguments from functional brain studies are brought against the claim that Everett's data from Piraha, a Muran (Paezan) language of Brazil, weaken the case for universal grammar in the sense of a neurologically based language module. Not only are neural networks for music recognition shared universally regardless of cultural familiarity, but the absence of various linguistic features in Piraha does not render its speakers' utterances incompatible with universal grammar; recursion in particular is attested in Piraha in limited domains. The capacity for metaphor may be constrained by Piraha culture; grammar is unlikely to suffer such an influence. Everett's reply upholds the view that cross-linguistic similarities are not necessarily evidence for the existence of universal grammar & revises his (2005) statements on recursion to maintain that Piraha lacks both embedding & system recursion; declarative utterances in Piraha are limited to assertions of the speaker's experience or that of a person whose lifetime overlaps the speakers', & Piraha grammar is therefore constrained by the cultural value of a principle of immediacy of experience. References. J. Hitchcock