The present article is focusing on Lévi-Straussian concept of „la torsion“ (the twist), which was for a long time fairly neglected by the structuralist criticism. The article consists in three parts. The first one is dedicated to the „torsion“ in the context of Claude Lévi-Strauss' works; the second part is trying to take into account different interpretations of the „twist" within the frame of Canonic Formula, and the third one raises the question about the meaning of the Lévi-Straussian twist, which emerges - in view of the present autor - as an exponent of cross-cultural horizon.
The article presents in four parts (Problem, Presentation, Polemic, Lesson) ethnolinguistic consequences of the „gaps“ discovered by US linguist Daniel L. Everett in a little-known Amazonian Language Pirahã. The gaps, and in particular the absence of recursion, unique to human language and thus an inherent component of universal grammar, gave rise to a series of polemics without any convincing or decisive result. Anyways, Everett’s claim that language can be culturally constrained remains a chalenge to continuing research in the field of linguistic anthropology, especially with regard to the relation between syntax, its emergence, and language evolution.
To write about "Vladimír Skalička and Linguistic Anthropology" might seem somewhat surprising if we take into consideration the generaly prevailing immanentist attitudes of the great Czech linguist (1909-1991; see also „Skaličkiana“, in Skalička 2004: 16). These attitudes may have been most strikingly documented, with even international repercusions, in the area of language typology. And yet: let us stress that at least since the time of the study Problém jazykové různosti (The Problems of Language Variety, 1947/48), there have appeared themes in Skalička‘s work that could be qualified as expressions of an interest in what is today called „linguistic anthropology“; this scope can be divided into three groups: (1) The „Eurasian“ group (or „Sprachbund“), which can be found in in Skalička‘s early bibliography but which returns later - albeit on a purely general level - in his considerations of language affinities. (2) The group of „primitive language", once a popular object of both linguistics and ethnology (the best example is the Australian aranta). Let us add that this group is not free of certain paradoxes: on one hand, Skalička admits an organic, distinctive role of gestures, but on the other hand he rejects the existence of a primitive language. (3) The group of „language and society", in which it is interesting not only to observe Skalička‘s explicit „ethnolinguistic" scepticism or circumspection, but also - precisely in this context - echoes of both Marrism and Marxism, which exteriorize the somewhat simplistic evolutionist and social perspective that can be hardly made compatible with the perspective of modem empirie ethnology. The explicitness of these echoes in Skalička‘s attitudes toward the above mention relation, gradually fades away.