features (some shared with other species). The narrow faculty Chomsky
says is unique to humans. In this formulation it becomes very narrow
indeed, however, because instead of being a term for a whole suite of
grammatical capacities it now became applied to just one grammatical
feature, commonly found indeed, the feature of recursion. Recursion
refers to a self-referential process whereby one statement is encapsulated
inside another, enabling a complexity of statements to be made. This
proposition is the apotheosis of the narrow version of Chomsky’stheory,
the broadest version by contrast being the notion that the whole of the
human brain (or body, one might then add) is a language tool–butitisa
tool for everything else as well. And just as people vary in overall ability,
so they vary in language ability.
Overall, evidence is on the side of supposing that language acquisition
is learned, not innate. A general capacity for language must be a part of the
human brain because all cultures have developed languages as means of
communication. If we like, then, that capacity can be called innate. But it
emerges only in a particular engagement with the environment, and in
human contexts that environment is the kinship system with parents and
others as caretakers. At once, therefore, language and culture presuppose
each other, depend on each other, because kinship goes with kinship
terms, that is, with language. And kinship exists because offspring require
time to grow up. A functioning kinship group produces a motivated
context in which all kinds of learning can safely take place, including initial
language learning and inculcation followed later by other influences, such
as peer–group interaction, formal schooling, travel, etc.
It is interesting that Everett, after arguing at length against a language
instinct (with all the ambiguities of meaning contained in that term),
supports instead another innate element, an “interactional instinct”
(p. 185) as the driving force behind the acquisition of language and cultural
skills. Perhaps, though, this also is not necessary as a hypothesis. A general-
ized ability to learn would suffice to explain how children develop language
abilities. This argument frees Everett to discuss many clear examples of how
cultural ideas and practices shape expressions in language. It seems that
language is brought fully back into the realm of culture, in a relationship of
co-evolution. Of course, it remains the case that particular languages have
different grammars and that these differences produce technical problems
for translation. Everett produced a striking example of this sort, because
the Piraha language spoken in a part of Amazonia which he studies does not
use recursion. It does not embed one sentence in another. Each sentence
72 BREAKING THE FRAMES