Sponsored Research
Over the years I have had grants totalling more than three million dollars for Amazonian research, from the European Commission, Brazil, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economics and Social Research Council of Great Britain, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation, among others. I am currently between grants.My research these days is focused mainly on language and culture. I spend most of my time analyzing the large amounts of data I have already collected over the years and writing books. However, I am planning to request funding for additional Amazonian research in 2011 (my sabbatical year).
Books
Area One: Phonology
Aspectos da Fonologia do Pirahã
(Mestrado em Linguistica, UNICAMP) – Check it out, you can now download all dissertations done in Brazil, including this old thing.
Area Two: Descriptive Linguistics
A Língua Pirahã e a Teoria da Sintaxe
(also a UNICAMP PhD dissertation) – You can also download this from the link given. (Both a theoretical and a descriptive work, in different parts.)
Wari’: The Pacaas Novos Language of Western Brazil
(written with Barbara Kern)
Area Three: Theoretical Morphology and Syntax
Why There Are No Clitics: An Alternative Perspective on Pronominal Allomorphy
Area Four: Popular science
Don’t Sleep There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
Cognitive Fire: Language as a Cultural Tool (in progress)
Area Five: Field Research
Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide
(with Jeanette Sakel): To appear from the Cambridge University Press Textbook (Red) Series in Linguistics
Area Six: Bible translation
The Gospel of Mark in Pirahã (Báako kasí)
(My translation. Published in Brazil, 1982) (Why mention Bible translation on the research page? Because translation is research, regardless of the content being translated, and is one of the best tests of one’s knowledge of the grammar, semantics, and pragmatics of a language.) The audio version of my translation of the Gospel of Mark in Piraha is available on the web from Gospel Recordings.