Dustin

Something I just read on Dwarkesh Patel's substack in a post where he shares his notes about Pinker's "The Language Instinct":

"Slave holders in some Caribbean slave societies imported slaves from different ethnicities, so that the slaves couldn’t organize a revolt. In order to communicate with each other, the adult slaves developed a combined pidgin - a half language which is a mishmash of the ones of offer with an incomplete grammar. But when children are brought up in these societies, every single time they spontaneously develop a creole out of that pidgin - a full language with complete grammar."

https://w4t.pw/f3

#language #linguistics

Notes: The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

What exactly is mentalese

Dwarkesh Podcast
Aug 5, 2024 at 7:09pmWeb
Show threadπ”Έπ•Ÿπ•”π•šπ•–π•Ÿπ•₯ π•Šπ• π•¦π•Ÿπ••π•€ πŸ”‰Aug 6, 2024

@dmwyatt
Well good luck to $M Prof. Pinker but here's the original take on that observation:

Derek Bickerton (1981) Roots of Language
https://archive.org/details/rootsoflanguage0000bick

#linguistics

Roots of language : Bickerton, Derek : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xiii, 351 p. : 24 cm

Internet Archive
Show threadDave in 🏴󠁧󠁒󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Aug 6, 2024
@ancientsounds
What does $M mean in this context? I haven't seen that before
@dmwyatt
Show threadDustinAug 6, 2024
@_dmh @ancientsounds Good question. The tone of the post makes it sound as if this is a rebuttal and takedown of Pinker, but I don't get it.
Show threadπ”Έπ•Ÿπ•”π•šπ•–π•Ÿπ•₯ π•Šπ• π•¦π•Ÿπ••π•€ πŸ”‰Aug 6, 2024
@_dmh @dmwyatt
It means β€œmillion dollars”, in reference to the big bucks of Prof. Pinker's popularizing (but not very original) Penguin
Show threadDave in 🏴󠁧󠁒󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Aug 6, 2024
@ancientsounds
Ah, okay. I am more used to hearing him pilloried for his "intellectual dark web" ties, comments on subjects outside his wheelhouse, and proximity to Epstein, not for having millions of dollars (which I didn't know he had)
@dmwyatt
Show threadπ”Έπ•Ÿπ•”π•šπ•–π•Ÿπ•₯ π•Šπ• π•¦π•Ÿπ••π•€ πŸ”‰Aug 6, 2024

@dmwyatt

β€œTo the people of Palmares,
El Palenque de San Basilio,
The Cockpit Country,
and the Saramacca River,
who fought for decency, dignity, and freedom
against the Cartesian savagery of Western savagery and slavemakers;
whose tongues, having survived
to confound pedagogue and philosopher alike,
now, by an ironic stroke of justice,
offers us indispensible keys to the knowledge of
our species.”

β€œCartesian” is, I am fairly sure, a jibe against Chomsky (author of β€œCartesian Linguistics”)