[joe_the_user]

I took note of the whole passage. Everett defines the Piraha grammar as not having recursion. He claims that when the Piraha use recursion in their linguistic communication ("story telling") they are somehow doing it outside the Piraha language. But the Piraha language is defined by the usage of the Piraha, not by one or another codified grammars.

Nevins et al. (linked above) note that recursion takes multiple forms in multiple languages and there isn't even anything terribly unusual about the form it takes in Piraha, even if this is a form Everett cannot accept into the grammar.