Daniel L. Everett is chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and a professor of anthropology and linguistics at Illinois State University. Everett began his linguistics work in 1977 as a missionary with SIL International (Summer Institute of Linguistics) in Brazil, where he studied the indigenous language Pirahã. He eventually began and completed an Sc.D. in linguistics at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). His current research is concerned with understanding how cultural values constrain language. Everett has concluded that Noam Chomsky's framework of universal grammar, the fundamental principle of recursion in particular, didn't obtain in Pirahã. His 2005 article in Current Anthropology, titled "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã," has caused a controversy in the field of linguistics. The 2007-08 Quentin Johnson Lecture.
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