"In 2005 Everett shot to international prominence with a paper http://goo.gl/KsoV3 claiming that he had identified features of the Pirahã language that challenged Noam Chomsky’s influential theory that human language is governed by "universal grammar," a genetically determined capacity that imposes the same fundamental shape on all the world’s tongues. That paper, published in the journal Current Anthropology, turned him into something of a popular hero, embraced in the press as a giant killer who had felled the mighty Chomsky -- but denounced by some fellow linguists as a fraud promoting dubious ideas about a powerless indigenous group while refusing to release his data to skeptics." Book reviewed http://www.nytimes.com/2012... - Adriano