Wari': the Pacaas Novos Language of Western Brazil
The first major study of any Chapakuran language, which makes an important contribution to linguistic theory while also documenting an endangered language.
About the book
This book resulted from ten years of collaboration (1986-1996) between Barbara Kern, a New Tribes Missionary, and myself. I provided most of the analysis and Barbara the data and additional analysis. At the time that it was published, it was the largest and most detailed grammar available on a Brazilian indigenous language. It is still the only grammar written on a language of the Chapakuran family. Based on this grammar, Wari' was indicated at the Max Planck Institute of Leipzig's conference on "Rara and Rarissima" in languages, to be the outlier of all languages in the world based on rare and very rare aspects of sound, syntax, and word structures.
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About Daniel Everett
I came to linguistics serendipitously. Growing up in Holtville, California, near the Mexican border, I heard Spanish all around me, though I expected to become a musician rather than a scientist. On a school-band trip to Hollywood, I saw My Fair Lady and became fascinated by Henry Higgins. The film’s linguistic consultant, Peter Ladefoged, later became my friend and co-author.
A few years later, I moved to Brazil with SIL International, with which I am no longer affiliated, and earned my doctorate in linguistics at the University of Campinas. Beginning in 1977, I spent many years living and conducting field research among Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon.
Linguist, anthropologist and author. Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Bentley University.