RECURSION AND HUMAN THOUGHT: WHY THE PIRAHÃ DON'T HAVE NUMBERS
I thought this was a very entertaining read, as it literally seems to be a case of the Natives converting the missionary. But I also found it interesting concerning number and language. The Piraha tribe of Brazil, whom Daniel L. Everett has studied extensively for years, basically do not have much number language at all in their language and, he says, the grammatical structure of their language makes it so that only finitely many things are sayable in it. And they have been pretty much completely impervious to the attempts of the missionaries to convert them. Everett seems to feel that their language is a good indication that at least part of Noam Chomsky's program that recursion is an essential part of language is wrong.