Moved to @Crul@lemm.ee

  • 71 Posts
  • 170 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 22nd, 2023
  • Crul@lemmy.worldOPtoLinguistics Humor@sh.itjust.works•Monolingual Fieldwork SpeedrunEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    I think is this one:

    daniel everett is the guy who worked on pirahã. he has all sorts of fantastical claims about the language but chief among it is the idea that the language doesn’t include recursion because the speakers avoid relative clauses (not what recursion means in this context but ok). the papers are basically unfalsifiable because the pirahã people distrust outsiders, rightly so, and he steers very close to outright calling the people primitive savages, which is very uncomfortable. if you call him out on his shit he just calls you a chomsky shill. super toxic guy.

    I find it funny that it’s from the same user that wrote this comment in another meme I posted about it:

    everett’s papers are incoherent and contradictory

    yes we should be skeptical of any theory. but finding proof that one part of a theory might be wrong does not make the entire theory wrong (also evidence keeps emerging that everett had an incomplete understanding of pirahã as for example didn’t someone prove that recursion is actually possible in pirahã, just marked by prosody rather than syntax?). and then framing it as “fuck chomsky” rather than “fuck universal grammar” is disingenuous at the very least.

    i dunno i could say more but i won’t. i will say though: the way that everett frames this discussion as being either with him or with chomsky is frankly delusional

    Found with new Reddit’s comment search:

    https://new.reddit.com/search/?q=Daniel%2BEverett%2Bcopypasta&type=comment

  • Crul@lemmy.worldOPtoAwwnverts@lemmy.world•Jumping spider (Parabathippus sp.) with eggs by Melvyn Yeo
    3·
    11 months ago

    From the description:

    Taken at night in Singapore forest.

    Quote from https://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider Jumping spiders are among the easiest to distinguish from similar spider families because of the shape of the cephalothorax and their eye patterns. The families closest to Salticidae in general appearance are the Corinnidae (distinguished also by prominent spines on the back four legs), the Oxyopidae (the lynx spiders, distinguished by very prominent spines on all legs), and the Thomisidae (the crab spiders, distinguished by their front four legs, which are very long and powerful). None of these families however, has eyes that resemble those of the Salticidae. Conversely, the legs of jumping spiders are not covered with any very prominent spines. Their front four legs generally are larger than the hind four, but not as dramatically so as those of the crab spiders, nor are they held in the outstretched-arms attitude characteristic of the Thomisidae.[3] In spite of the length of their front legs, Salticidae depend on their rear legs for jumping. The generally larger front legs are used partly to assist in grasping prey,[4] and in some species, the front legs and pedipalps are used in species-recognition signalling.

    The jumping spiders, unlike the other families, have faces that are roughly rectangular surfaces perpendicular to their direction of motion. In effect this means that their forward-looking, anterior eyes are on “flat faces”, as shown in the photographs. Their eye pattern is the clearest single identifying characteristic. They have eight eyes, as illustrated.[3][4] Most diagnostic are the front row of four eyes, in which the anterior median pair are more dramatically prominent than any other spider eyes apart from the posterior median eyes of the Deinopidae. There is, however, a radical functional difference between the major (AME) eyes of Salticidae and the major (PME) eyes of the Deinopidae; the large posterior eyes of Deinopidae are adapted mainly to vision in dim light, whereas the large anterior eyes of Salticidae are adapted to detailed, three-dimensional vision for purposes of estimating the range, direction, and nature of potential prey, permitting the spider to direct its attacking leaps with great precision. The anterior lateral eyes, though large, are smaller than the AME and provide a wider forward field of vision.

    The rear row of four eyes may be described as strongly bent, or as being rearranged into two rows, with two large posterior lateral eyes furthest back. They serve for lateral vision. The posterior median eyes also have been shifted out laterally, almost as far as the posterior lateral eyes. They are usually much smaller than the posterior lateral eyes and there is doubt about whether they are at all functional in many species.

    The body length of jumping spiders generally range from 1 to 25 mm (0.04–0.98 in).[3][5] The largest is Hyllus giganteus,[5] while other genera with relatively large species include Phidippus, Philaeus and Plexippus.[6]

    In addition to using their silk for safety lines while jumping, they also build silken “pup tents”, where they shelter from bad weather and sleep at night. They molt within these shelters, build and store egg cases within them, and also spend the winter in them.[7]