Welcome to Daniel L. Everett's Website

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

Profile

This edition was chosen by Blackwell's book stores (UK) as one of their favourites of 2009. The London Sunday Times made it an 'Editor's Choice'.

Pantheon

Vintage

National Public Radio chose this edition as one of the best books of 2009. You can hear about it on NPR's 'All things considered' program. An excerpt is featured on NPR's main webpage.

Courrier (Korean)

DVA (GERMAN)

 

Due to the success of the original editions of Don't sleep there are snakes, both Profile (UK) and Vintage-Pantheon (US) have issued paperback editions. Translations in French (Le monde ignore des indiens Pirahas) , Thai, Japanese, and Mandarin will also be appearing in the next few months.

Reviews

There have been many, many reviews of the book. One of the most recent, in Psychology Today, is found here.

Non-fiction Award

Don't Sleep There are Snakes has just been named a finalist in the Society of Midland Authors' prize for Adult Non-fiction for 2009.

A few quotes about Don't sleep:

"... fascinating and candid account of life with the Pirahã..." Publishers Weekly (Signature Review) "... Everett’s experiences and findings fairly explode from these pages and will reverberate in the minds of readers." Kirkus Reviews (starred review); "This is an astonishing book: a work of exploration, into the most distant place and language, but also a revelation of the way language is shaped by thought and circumstance." London Times (daily); "... destined to become a classic of popular enthnography..." Independent; "... remarkable... its conjunction of physical and intellectual adventure is irresistible..." London Sunday Times; "... shares its author's best traits: perseverance, insight, humor and humility. Both the Pirahãs and their interpreter make splendid company..." Cleveland Plain Dealer; "... One of the most interesting stories you will ever read..." Irish Herald; "... One of the best books I have read." New Scientist

Poem by Bob Holman about Don't sleep:

Morning wake up shout at dream
Get it out there to you in your dream
Piraha watching you dream, angels hmm
Maybe anaconda slides out of river
Dances on its tail and flops down beside you
Or me exhausted its jaw flaps and we go for
A ride "Don't sleep you are inside a snake
When you sleep" and the tarantulas tarantella
Little sleep fuzzies remind you “Don't wake up
There are people (non-Piraha)”

 

Dan Everett Books

For information on ordering, reviews and general information about books by me, please visit the site (still in progress to a degree), daneverettbooks.com

Cognitive Fire: Language as a Cultural Tool

I am writing a new book, Cognitive Fire: Language as a Cultural Tool for Pantheon (US) and Profile (UK). The book is for a general audience and makes the case that language is not innate, that there is no language instinct, and that talk of Universal Grammar or a Language Organ doesn't match up well with the evidence from evolution, language development, or data from the world's languages. This book, like Don't Sleep There are Snakes, tells its story partially by means of personal experiences of mine and others in Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere. Cognitive Fire surveys research by psychologists, computer scientists, primatologists, anthropologists, linguists, philosophers and others to make the case that language is an elaborate tool for our brains, the basis for other tools like math and music. Probably language was invented just once in human history but evolves in all societies such that the form of language (grammar) comes to match the needs of its containing culture. Language was originally developed by someone like the guy on the GEICO commercials. That is, language most likely derives from the brains and efforts of normal hominins, rather than resulting from a sudden evolutionary saltation. Or to aphorize, it comes from cavemen, not X-men.

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.

Folha de São Paulo ran a large story, The Iconoclast in 2009. The two parts of the article can be downloaded here and here.

Internet Interview

Machines Like Us

 

Radio

BBC World Service: FORUM

This interview was conducted in March, 2009, and includes my sixty second idea to change the world.

BBC World Service: Outlook

This interview was conducted with me in February, 2008. It is about how the Pirahãs 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 1

On endangered languages

BBC Radio - Excess Baggage 2

Raising a family in the jungle

BBC Radio - Excess Baggage 3

John McCarthy interviews me about Don't sleep there are snakes.

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

A video from New Scientist about my work.

Fora.tv

My lecture at the Long Now Foundation may be watched on Fora.tv.

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 Activity

Newest paper

Criticism of my paper on the grammar-culture (Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Piraha: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language, in Current Anthropology, August-October, 2005), was recently published in the journal Language. Here is my response, published in the same issue.

The same authors followed up with a short additional set of criticisms. Here is my response to that final set of criticisms and to the very idea of recursion as originally presented by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch.

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. Our paper, on Number as a Cognitive Technology: Evidence from Pirahã Language and Cognition, appeared in Cognition in 2008 and was selected by Discover Magazine as one of the top 100 science stories of the year.

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

Upcoming events:

The Grammar of Happiness

This documentary is being filmed about the Pirahas and my work with them. A non-final promo video can be found on the web, so I have linked it here as well.

Geo Magazine

In its January, 2010, issue GEO Magazine has a feature article on my work, by Malte Henk and illustrated with beautiful photographs by Martin Schoeller.

 

Germany in February

In February 2010, I will be one of four plenary speakers at the German Linguistics Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Sprachwissenshaft).

In February I will also be speaking at different venues in Germany to promote Don't sleep.

Others

Spring 2010, Marquette University Linguistics Club.

May 28- June 01, 2010 The BF Skinner Lecturer in Verbal Behavior, at the Association for Behavioral Analysis International, San Antonio Texas.

Summer 2010, Research Center for Linguistic Typology, International Workshop. La Trobe University, Australia.