Tuesday 4 October 2016

"a literary Sharknado of error and self-satisfaction"

I read and enjoyed Dan Everett’s book Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes several years ago.

However, it seems some/most/all of his claims may have been a tad overstated.
One form of recursion that Pirahã appeared not to have according to Nevins et. al., was possessive recursion – not remarkable, in their view, because neither does German. But subsequent fieldwork conducted by Raiane Oliveira Salles (2015) recorded constructions like ‘Kapoogo’s canoe’s motor is big’. Once again, setting aside the points that, hey, I guess they have the concepts of tools and personal property after all, there is the key point that this is a possessive embedded within a possessive.
E.J. Spode’s review of Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech is a savage indictment of anti-intellectualism, and the post-fact society.
Wolf[e] is the long form master of the techniques that Trump has managed to distill into tweets.
I usually buy books like there’s no tomorrow.  Spode’s review has me suspecting that there’s one particular book that I won’t be buying.





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