丹尼尔·埃弗里特(Daniel L. Everett) 曾任伊利诺伊州立大学语言、文学与文化系主任,匹兹堡大学语言学系主任,现任本特利大学艺术与科学学院的院长。 丹尼尔•埃弗里特能够流利地使用皮拉罕语,因长期从事研究皮拉罕语而闻名于世。他在皮拉罕语系统上的发现,既挑战了语言学界权威乔姆斯基的理论,更进一步说明了语言与文化的相互关系。
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.
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