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weezuls243 karma

Why does Chomsky call you a charlatan? Does he think you made up linguistic data?

weezuls80 karma

Right: Everett is talking about language for numbers, not number independent of language

The Piraha have no words for numbers, not even 1

See Frank, Everett, Fedorenko & Gibson (2008), Cognition.

weezuls38 karma

What Everett means is that they have no words for exact numbers, not even one.

But they do have the concepts of 1, 2, 3, like non-human animals. they just don't have words for these concepts because their culture doesn't make it useful to talk about such concepts.

See Frank, Everett, Fedorenko & Gibson (2008), Cognition.

weezuls8 karma

that's a mistake: like all humans and non-human animals, they have concepts for small exact numbers and approximate numbers

I am a researcher in this area, and I know the Piraha discussion well. The paper by Frank et al makes the position clear (where Everett is an author)

Edit: apparently, Everett may have a different definition of "concept" than what what cognitive scientists use.