Keren Madora Everett (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Graham) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

-born

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

and

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

. Keren Everett has spent many years in the Amazon studying the Pirahã tribe and their language. The Pirahã language is of great interest to linguists, but only a few people apart from the Pirahã tribe are fluent in it. Keren Everett's former husband

Daniel Everett Daniel Leonard Everett (born 26 July 1951) is an American linguist and author best known for his study of the Amazon basin's Pirahã people and their language. Everett is currently Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences at Bentley University ...

, whom she married in 1969, is the best-known authority on the language. He acknowledges his ex-wife as an expert on the prosody of Pirahã.

John Colapinto John Colapinto (born in 1958) is a Canadian journalist, author and novelist and a staff writer at ''The New Yorker''. In 2000, he wrote the ''New York Times'' bestseller '' As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl'', which exposed ...

(April 16, 2007
''The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?''
''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', online edition. Accessed April 29, 2009. They lived among the Pirahã from 1978 to 1983 and from 1999 to 2002. Following their separation in 2005, Keren returned to Brazil where, as of 2007, she was continuing her missionary work among the Pirahã.

Publications

* Keren M. Everett, "The acoustic correlates of stress in Piraha". ''Journal of Amazonian Languages'' vol.1 no.2, pp. 104–162. March 1998. * Daniel L. Everett and Keren M. Everett, "On the relevance of Syllable Onsets to Stress Placement." ''Linguistic Inquiry'' vol. 15, pp. 705–711. 1984.

References

Living people American expatriates in Brazil American Protestant missionaries Female Christian missionaries Protestant missionaries in Brazil Missionary linguists Year of birth missing (living people) Linguists from the United States {{US-linguist-stub