Product Information
Daniel Everett took his family to convert the Pirahas (pronounced pee-da-HAN), a remote people of the Amazonian jungle whose language no outsider had yet been able to understand. They encountered malaria, snakes, jaguars, spiders, insects, and a plot to kill them in their sleep. But Everett gradually gained entry to this curious culture. Along the way he discovered a language which disproved the most established tenets of linguistics. Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirahas, 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. He describes how he began to realise that his discoveries about the Pirahas' 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. Adventure, personal enlightenment and the makings of a scientific revolution proceed together in this vivid, funny and moving book.Product Identifiers
PublisherProfile Books
ISBN-139781846680304
eBay Product ID (ePID)87569114
Product Key Features
Book TitleDon't Sleep, there Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
AuthorDaniel Everett
FormatPaperback
LanguageEnglish
TopicMemorials
Publication Year2008
TypeTextbook
Number of Pages320 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height234mm
Item Width153mm
Additional Product Features
Title_AuthorDaniel Everett
Topic AreaRegional History
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom