Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle

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Everett's 1979 Universidade Estadual de Campinas master's thesis on the sound system of Piraha, from articulatory phonetics to prosody (e.g. intonation, tone, and stress placement). I was now completely conscious, awakened by the noise and shouts of Pirahas. I sat up and looked around. A crowd was gathering about twenty feet from my bed on the high bank of the Maici, and all were energetically gesticulating and yelling. Everyone was focused on the beach just across the river from my house. I got out of bed to get a better look — and because there was no way to sleep through the noise. This "evidential" aspect of language is tied to/explained by the fact that Piraha language and culture are constrained by immediate experience -- facts are only considered facts by the Pirahas if there's an eyewitness, which also helps explain why all efforts to convert Pirahas have failed over more than 200 years. The author himself, a missionary, ended up being un-converted. Everyone continued to look toward the beach. I heard Kristene, my six-year-old daughter, at my side. The title of the book is Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, and this references some popular and useful advice dispensed to Everett while living in the Piraha. “Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes” means a few things: It means it first in the literal way, that you should be careful of sleeping too soundly because there are dangerous animals like snakes. It also seems to be used in the metaphorical way to mean something closer to “good night.” Seems like a fun way to say good night.

Furthermore, the idea of this being the result of a cultural bias (the existential primality principle or whatever he calls it) sure sounds nice, but even if I were to discount Everett's grounding in the western world, would still require a great deal of evidence, such as, perhaps a Piraha native learning English and discussing the theory in detail. The fact is that every phenomena has a multitude of explanations, and it's incredibly problematic that Everett argues from a position of experiential superiority (I lived with them, I know them, I am them, etc.) It is certainly easy to list of the things they don’t have: they don’t have advanced tools, they don’t have many material possessions, they don’t have the internet, they don’t have big houses, and the list goes on. However, I was very interested in what they do have — or things they don’t have that seems to be a positive. Vivid…. The book is fascinating…. May serve to bring the furor of linguistics and language research to readers who otherwise never catch sight of it.”— ScienceBook Summary: Indigenous Cultures in an… Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World is a book that explores the history, culture, and current state of indigenous peoples around the world. Written by Claire Smith and Graeme K.… Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-06-28 21:32:43 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA139901 Boxid_2 CH129925 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Containerid_2 X0008 Donor An article, The Origins of Speech, was published in Harper's Magazine, presenting in advance the content of this book. The Pirahas have shown me that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile. I have learned these things from the Pirahas, and I will be grateful to them as long as I live.

Book Summary: The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius is a historical account of the lives of the first twelve Roman emperors. Written during the reign of Hadrian, the book provides a detailed and… Immensely interesting and deeply moving…. One of the best books I have read.”—Lucy Dodwell, New Scientist Overall, I really enjoyed this read -- Everett did a surprisingly good job of giving enough rigorous explanations on the classic linguistic theories he is challenging. What I also like was how Everett depicts Pirahas culture and people in a matter-of-fact and non-judgemental way, especially in aspects that are certainly deemed at least controversial in western cultures. Finally, the last practical message of the book is the importance of preserving endangered languages: I spotted this book at a good time: I am in the midst of a very intensive year studying te reo Māori (the Māori language), and reading about a linguist studying an indigenous language yielded many welcome insights. As a linguist, the objective of Everett's study of the Pirahá and their language was to be able to translate the Bible (he was also a missionary). His research living among the Pirahá led to a number of other unexpected outcomes. At a broader theoretical level, he realised that Chomsky's theory of grammar (canon in linguistics) does not really hold for the Pirahá. At a personal level - and more meaningfully - what he learns from the Pirahá led to an epistemological crisis and loss of his religion.Linguistic Fieldwork (2012). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Daniel Everett & Jeanette Sakel. Immensely interesting and deeply moving…. One of the best books I have read.”—Lucy Dodwell,New Scientist This book was all over the place. It went like this: I went to Amazanionan Jungle to talk about God to the Indians. My wife got malaria. The Pirahas don't have numerals. My kids grew up in the jungle and the Pirahas talk about sex a lot. They also don't have recurssion in their language, so clearly Chomsky was wrong. Also, there is no God (sorry if this last bit was a spoiler to some). Kris stood on her toes and peered across the river. Then at me. Then at the Pirahas. She was as puzzled as I was. The women wore the same sleeveless, collarless, midlength dresses they worked and slept in, stained a dark brown from dirt and smoke. The men wore gym shorts or loincloths. None of the men were carrying their bows and arrows. That was a relief. Prepubescent children were naked, their skin leathery from exposure to the elements. The babies’ bottoms were calloused from scooting across the ground, a mode of locomotion that for some reason they prefer to crawling. Everyone was streaked from ashes and dust accumulated by sleeping and sitting on the ground near the fire.

I realize that this is wholly unfair to everyone who likes to think they understand a culture because they lived as part of one for awhile. But you don't. And you never will. we cannot study languages effectively apart from their cultural context, especially languages whose cultures differ radically from the culture of the researcher.At age 18, Everett married the daughter of these missionaries, Keren Graham. He completed a diploma in Foreign Missions from the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago in 1975. Daniel and Keren Everett subsequently enrolled in the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International), which trains missionaries in field linguistics so that they can translate the Bible into various world languages. In the jungle with the Pirahas I regularly failed to see wildlife they saw. My inexperienced eyes just weren't able to see as theirs did. Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious (2016) University of Chicago Press. This is where the real story begins. Everett came to the tribe as a disciple both of Christ and Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar, but gradually he realized that this tribe, the Pirahas, didn't have numerous attributes that Chomsky said should be in every grammar, such as conjunctions and recursions. When discussing how this tribe may upend our entire theory of language, it seems like every paragraph he writes sets off new fireworks. He talks about how the Piraha's concern for the immediacy of experience prevents them from generalizing about even such simple things as color, number, or time. But, he knows, if such cultural concerns can influence grammar and language then the whole linguistic system of a-cultural grammar (elaborated by people like Pinker in the Language Instinct and McWhorter in The Tower of Babel) has to be overthrown. A language may tell us much more about a culture than we ever admitted possible. For instance, another language researcher found that tribes with fatalistic heros in their myths tended to use passive voice, while those with more active heros used active voice. Voice wasn't just a way for organizing information in a sentence, a la Chomsky, it was an everyday expression of belief. This is both the more common sense and perhaps more exciting view. There's so much more we can learn from languages that we ever thought possible before.

Don’t you see him over there?” he asked impatiently. “Xigagaí, one of the beings that lives above the clouds, is standing on the beach yelling at us, telling us he will kill us if we go to the jungle.”Absorbing…. Shares its author’s best traits: perseverance, insight, humor and humility. Both the Pirahas and their interpreter make splendid company.”— The Plain Dealer