13 Quotes by Daniel L. Everett

Grammar is symbols used together. Syntax is the arrangement of those symbols as they are used together.

In other words, in response to the question, ‘Can anything at all be translated from any language to any other language,’ the answer seems to be, ‘No. Different languages might have different expressive powers for different kinds of information.

But the fact remains that 2 million years ago in Africa, a Homo erectus community began to share information among its members by means of language. They were the first to say, ‘It’s over there,’ or, ‘I am hungry.’ Maybe the first to say, ‘I love you.

It was eventually discovered that Indo-European was the mother of most European languages. And it was then discovered that this was also the mother of non-European languages such as Farsi, Hindi and many others.

A serious and war-threatening misunderstanding grew out of two distinct cultural interpretations of this deceptively simple-looking treaty. The indigenes expected one thing. The government expected another. And both were right according to the language.

Philosophers wonder whether the things we categorize are there because we have words for them or because there really is an underlying distinction or perhaps they are just imagined. That is, do languages agree about what the world consists of because the world consists of those things or because humans share limitations that lead them to perceive the world in similar ways?

So long as they possessed symbols, ordering of the symbols and meanings partially determined by those components in conjunction with context they had language.

Speech sounds, words, sentences, grammatical affixes and tones all emerged from the initial invention of the symbol, with the invention being improved and spreading over time by total societal involvement, just as all other inventions are.

It is why caution must be exercised before accepting the popular but very misleading idea that the brain is a computer, an artefact very unlike an organ. Indeed, computers lack culture.