Language
Linguists identify at least four sub-groupings of Dani languages:
- Lower-Grand Valley Dani (20,000 speakers)
- Mid-Grand Valley Dani (50,000 speakers)
- Upper-Grand Valley Dani (20,000 speakers)
- and the Lani or Western Dani (180,000 speakers)
The Dani languages differentiate only two basic colours, mili for cool/dark shades such as blue, green, and black, and mola for warm/light colours such as red, yellow, and white. This trait makes it an interesting field of research for language psychologists, e.g. Eleanor Rosch, eager to know whether there is a link between way of thought and language.
Read more about this topic: Dani People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
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