I just read a draft of Geoff Pullum’s paper on the Pirahã controversy, presented at a workshop of the recent LSA meeting.

It’s not a particularly interesting paper to me, since it has nothing to say about the conflicting data claims at the center of the controversy. No one has ever given an explanation of how one might integrate the evidence for clausal embedding in Everett 1986 (etc.) with the writings of Everett from 2005 onward. These two Everetts are in mortal conflict. Everett (1986), for example gives examples of embedded clauses, Everett (2005) denies that the language has clausal embedding, and Everett (2009), faced with the contradiction, has decided to gloss this same example (Nevins et al. 2009, ex. 13, reproduced from Everett 1986, ex. 232) as two sentences, with no argument provided for why earlier Everett was wrong. While one ought not to reason from one’s own limited imagination, it’s hard for me to fathom anything other than incompetence in 1987 or dishonesty 2005-present. Either way, it suggests that additional attention is probably needed on other specific claims about this language, such as the presence of rare phonetic elements (Everett 1988a) and the presence of ternary metrical feet (Everett 1988b); and on these topics there is far less room for creative hermeneutics.

If people have been nasty to Everett—and this seems to be the real complaint from Pullum—it’s because the whole thing stinks to high heaven; it’s a shame Pullum can’t smell the bullshit.

References

Everett, D. L. 1986. Pirahã. In Handbook of Amazonian Languages, vol. 1, D. C. Derbyshire and G. K. Pullum (ed.), pages 200-326. Mouton de Gruyter.
Everett, D. L. 1988a. Phonetic rarities in Pirahã. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 12: 94-96.
Everett, D. L. 1988b. On metrical constituent structure in Pirahã. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 6: 207-246.
Everett, D. L. 2005. Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: another look at the design features of human language. Current Anthropology 46: 621-646.
Everett, D. L. 2009. Pirahã culture and grammar: a response to some criticisms. Language 85: 405-442.
Nevins, A., Pesetsky, D., and Rodrigues, C. 2009. Pirahã exceptionality: a reassessment. Language 85: 355-404.