Daniel Everett

Daniel Leonard Everett

Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirah�s, they converted him. He shows the slow, meticulous steps by which he gradually mastered their language and his gradual realisation that its unusual nature closely reflected its speakers' startlingly original perceptions of the world.Everett describes how he began to realise that his discoveries about the Pirah� language opened up a new way of understanding how language works in our minds and in our lives, and that this way was utterly at odds with Noam Chomsky's universally accepted linguistic theories. The perils of passionate academic opposition were then swiftly conjoined to those of the Amazon in a debate whose outcome has yet to be won. Everett's views are most recently discussed in Tom Wolfe's bestselling The Kingdom of Speech.Adventure, personal enlightenment and the makings of a scientific revolution proceed together in this vivid, funny and moving book.

Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes

Building on a controversial premise that refutes the opinions of most linguists to argue that language is a unique and essential cultural tool, an anthropological and psychological report contends that language is a human, societally driven invention that can be reinvented and lost.

The Cultural Tool

Language

sieben Jahre bei den Pirahã-Indianern am Amazonas

Das glücklichste Volk

Barbara Kern

This is the first major study of any Chapakuran language and makes an important contribution to linguistic theory. This study is especially timely as the Chapakuran languages of Western Brazil and Eastern Bolivia are endangered, and less than 2,000 known speakers of Wari and its related dialects are left in existence.

Daniel Leonard Everett

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