Don't Sleep, There are Snakes

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes
Author: Daniel Everett
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2010-07-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1847651224

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.

Language

Language
Author: Daniel L. Everett
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0307907023

A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention

How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention
Author: Daniel L. Everett
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 087140477X

A Buzzfeed Gift Guide Selection “Few books on the biological and cultural origin of humanity can be ranked as classics. I believe [this] will be one of them.” — Edward O. Wilson At the time of its publication, How Language Began received high acclaim for capturing the fascinating history of mankind’s most incredible creation. Deemed a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s), Daniel L. Everett posits that the near- 7,000 languages that exist today are not only the product of one million years of evolution but also have allowed us to become Earth’s apex predator. Tracing 60,000 generations, Everett debunks long- held theories across a spectrum of disciplines to affi rm the idea that we are not born with an instinct for language. Woven with anecdotes of his nearly forty years of fi eldwork amongst Amazonian hunter- gatherers, this is a “completely enthralling” (Spectator) exploration of our humanity and a landmark study of what makes us human. “[An] ambitious text. . . . Everett’s amiable tone, and especially his captivating anecdotes . . . , will help the neophyte along.”— New York Times Book Review

Encounters at the Heart of the World

Encounters at the Heart of the World
Author: Elizabeth A. Fenn
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374711070

Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were for centuries at the center of the North American universe. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. Her boldly original interpretation of these diverse research findings offers us a new perspective on early American history, a new interpretation of the American past. By 1500, more than twelve thousand Mandans were established on the northern Plains, and their commercial prowess, agricultural skills, and reputation for hospitality became famous. Recent archaeological discoveries show how these Native American people thrived, and then how they collapsed. The damage wrought by imported diseases like smallpox and the havoc caused by the arrival of horses and steamboats were tragic for the Mandans, yet, as Fenn makes clear, their sense of themselves as a people with distinctive traditions endured. A riveting account of Mandan history, landscapes, and people, Fenn's narrative is enriched and enlivened not only by science and research but by her own encounters at the heart of the world.

Linguistic Fieldwork

Linguistic Fieldwork
Author: Jeanette Sakel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2012-02-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0521837278

A handy beginner's guide to linguistic fieldwork - from the preparation of the work to the presentation of the results.

Searching for a Better Life

Searching for a Better Life
Author: Sorcha Mahony
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-05-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785338595

Life in Bangkok for young people is marked by profound, interlocking changes and transitions. This book offers an ethnographic account of growing up in the city’s slums, struggling to get by in a rapidly developing and globalizing economy and trying to fulfil one’s dreams. At the same time, it reflects on the issue of agency, exploring its negative potential when exercised by young people living under severe structural constraint. It offers an antidote to neoliberal ideas around personal responsibility, and the assumed potential for individuals to break through structures of constraint in any sustained way.

Time for Bed

Time for Bed
Author: Mem Fox
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 60
Release: 1997
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780152010669

As darkness falls, parents get their children ready for sleep.

Dark Matter of the Mind

Dark Matter of the Mind
Author: Daniel L. Everett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 022607076X

This book is an exploration of interrelationships among culture, language, and the individual unconscious (the dark matter of the mind ), how these feed into a sense of self, and implications for the notion of human nature. The first part of the book is concerned with perceptual and cultural bases of dark matter and the effect of dark matter on perception (especially vision) and the interpretation of discourse. The second part is concerned with the contribution of dark matter to languagewith language viewed as a combination of speech and gesture, and including issues related to translation. In the final part Everett addresses implications of his account, summarizing and extending arguments for replacing an instinct-based account of human nature with a culturally-based, dark matter view of the constructed self. Everett makes a powerful argument for the influence of culture on unconscious forces that underlie human behavior and the individual s sense of self, with much of the power of the argument coming from the deep insights he gained from living and working with the Pirahas of the Amazon. This is an important book that sits at the intersection of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and it is enriched by a combination of the author s knowledge of these fields and his cross-cultural perspective. The book will make an important contribution to newly emerging directions taken by cognitive science. After decades of a field derailed by ethnocentric, instinct-based views of language and the mind, the cognitive sciences need such informed analyses of the relationship between culture, cognition, and language, as embodied in speech and gesture."

Y 2 4 Jesus

Y 2 4 Jesus
Author: Daniel Thulare
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 95
Release: 2010
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1449076009

Passing on is simply the separation of the natural body from the spirit. The natural body returns to dust and the spirit joins the spirit world. Indigenous peoples, including Batswana and their descendants, Bapedi, two ethnic groups in South Africa with which the author has blood links, believe that when the separation occurs the spirit then joins the spirit world. This is where everybody who passes on goes to. A reading of the Bible reveals in the book of Genesis that the fathers also knew this fact, and it is recorded in their passing on that they joined their kin. The true person being the spirit, which simply resides within the natural body, is not restricted by the grave in its power to communicate once the person leaves the natural body. There is no basis why a spirit still resident within a natural body cannot communicate with a spirit which has joined the spirit world. The only Biblical condition is that there must be discerment of whether the spirit spoken to is a good spirit or a bad spirit. The book seeks to explain the knowledge systems of the Indigenous people and seeks to demonstrate that the thinking, in general, that Indigenous knowlegde is inferior, unBiblical or UnChristain can no longer be sustained. This is done through scriptural references. An explanation is also given of some practices, traditions and the hierarchical organogram of Indigenous Churches in South Africa through scriptures. Indigenous Churches are generally excluded and as a result do not generally engage in discusions and as a result they are most often misrepresented by the main body of Christ. The chapters are an exposition of what is Zion, who and what is a leader in Zion terms, the ecclesiastical polity or leadership hierarchy and/or organogram of the church, what is a family unit, creating my future my way, a discussion of the rift within the body of Christ as it relates to Zion and the church's dress code.