Welcome to Daniel L. Everett's Website

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazon Jungle

On November 11, 2008 my book on the Pirahã language and culture, with plenty of stories from my thirty years of living and contact with them, will be published by Pantheon Books. Near that time it will also be published by Profile Books in the United Kingdom. It will also be published near this time in Germany by Random House DVA and in France by Flammarion. The book is illustrated with the photography of Martin Schoeller.

Below are tentative covers for the Pantheon and Profile editions. The UK version can be preordered here. The US edition can be preordered here. The Profile catalog of new Fall 08 releases is found here. Here is a reaction of one reader who has made their way through the ms.:

John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley:'Dan Everett has written an excellent book. First, it is a very powerful autobiographical account of his stay with the Piraha in the jungles of the Amazon basin. Second, it is a brilliant piece of ethnographical description of life among the Piraha. And third, and perhaps most important in the long run, his data and his conclusions about the language of the Piraha run dead counter to the prevailing orthodoxy in linguistics. If he is right, he will permanently change our conception of human language.'

Edward Gibson,
Professor of Cognitive Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

"Dan Everett is the most interesting man I have ever met. This story about his life among the Pirahas is a fascinating read.

His observations and claims about the culture and language of the Pirahas are astounding. Whether or not all of his hypotheses turn out to be correct,

Everett has forced many researchers to re-evaluate basic assumptions about the relationship among culture, language and cognition. I strongly recommend the book. "

 

 

In the news

Newspapers

Toronto Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, NRC Handelsblad, El Mundo, The Independent, Folha de Sao Paulo, South China Morning News, Finnish newspaper.

Radio

BBC World Service: Outlook

This interview was conducted with me in February, 2008. It is about how the Pirahas affected me spiritually and other aspects of life among them. (This is a large mp3 file)

National Public Radio

National Public Radio featured my work in 2007.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

I was featured on the program And Sometimes Y.

New Scientist SCI POD

Interview with me about Pirahã (.mp3 file)

BBC Radio - Excess Baggage

On endangered languages

BBC Radio - Excess Baggage

Raising a family in the jungle

BBC Radio - Material World

Debate with Prof. Ian Roberts, Head of Linguistics, University of Cambridge

WGLT Radio (Illinois State University)

My 'home' radio station also interviewed me about recursion.

Magazines

New Scientist

New Scientist recently published pieces by me and other scientists on our favorite books.

New Scientist published an interview (pdf) on my research in January, 2008. There was also a New Scientist article on this work in 2006. A section of that article (pdf) is here.

Veja

The major Brazilian newsmagazine.

Prospect

Covering the Chomsky-Everett controversy.

Der Spiegel

One of the earlier articles on the Pirahãs.

New Yorker

The most substantive story about my work is in the New Yorker.

Newton

The Italian magazine, Newton, carried a nice story.

Gehirn and Geist

The German popular science magazine Gehirn & Geist, (picture here), carried a couple of stories about Pirahã.

Scientific American Mind

Scientific American Mind also interviewed me about this research.

Science News

First article on Pirahã in a science magazine.

Your Manchester

Your Manchester is a new alumni magazine for the University of Manchester.

Video

New Scientist

There is a new video from New Scientist on my work.

 

The Edge

A video of me explaining my research on the EDGE website tries to clear up some of the doubts that people have raised about my claims and works.

Other stuff

There is discussion of my work on LanguageLog. A partial list of other coverage of the Pirahã:CNN , BBC, Pakistan Daily Times, Communist Party of India official paper, and others. This interest began with a study by Peter Gordon in Science. Most of these others are concerned with Gordon's paper.

Research Interests

Linguistics

See the page labeled research for some sample papers in Morphosyntax, Phonology, and Ethnosyntax.

 

Anthropology

See the page on research for sample works, including a new field methods manual, in Anthropological Linguistics and Ethnosyntax.

Cognition

In recent months I have been working extensively with Michael Frank, Ted Gibson, and Evelina Fedorenko, via Gibson's lab at MIT. An advanced draft of a paper on number in Pirahã by this team can be downloaded here.

I am also collaborating in research with folks at Stanford Psychology, including Jennifer Yoon, Nathan Witthoft, and Jonathan Winawer,