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About this book
Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirahãs, 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 Pirahã 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.
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Some Notes on the Language as Used in This Book
- Preface
- Prologue
- Part One: LIFE
- 1. Discovering the World of the Pirahãs
- 2. The Amazon
- 3. The Cost of Discipleship
- 4. Sometimes You Make Mistakes
- 5. Material Culture and the Absence of Ritual
- 6. Families and Community
- 7. Nature and the Immediacy of Experience
- 8. A Teenager Named Túkaaga: Murder and Society
- 9. Land to Live Free
- 10. Caboclos: Vignettes of Amazonian Brazilian Life
- Part Two: LANGUAGE
- 11. Changing Channels with Pirahã Sounds
- 12. Pirahã Words
- 13. How Much Grammar Do People Need?
- 14. Values and Talking: The Partnership between Language and Culture
- 15. Recursion: Language as a Matrioshka Doll
- 16. Crooked Heads and Straight Heads: Perspectives on Language and Truth
- Part Three: CONCLUSION
- 17. Converting the Missionary
- Epilogue: Why Care about Other Cultures and Languages?
- Acknowledgments