[compsciphd]

I thought I read an article one that some very untouched tribes (ala amazon?) have fundamental different ways of communicating that undercut Chomsky's notions of universal grammer. Which the SciAm article glances on, but doesn't really go into any depth.

[foobarqux]

That's Piraha and Daniel Everett's work. Even assuming the results are correct (that Piraha doesn't use recursion) that doesn't demonstrate anything relevant. What you want to show is that Piraha people don't have the ability for recursion (i.e. they are an example of people without this innate language faculty), not that they don't apply it. I don't think anyone believes that if you take a Piraha newborn to New York they wouldn't learn English.

Chomsky explains it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Lk79bnUbM&t=1386s or here https://youtu.be/c6MU5zQwtT4?si=A9t8d0oXV4dOLZTe&t=3008