Daniel Everett

American linguist who lived among the Pirahã people of the Amazon for decades and argued that Pirahã language lacks recursion — challenging Chomsky's universal grammar hypothesis.

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: memoir and analysis of Pirahã language. Argued Pirahã lacks recursion (embedded clauses), numbers, color terms, and creation myths — challenging the view that these are universal features of language. The controversy with Chomsky became one of the most public debates in modern linguistics.