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Pirahã language

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The Pirahã language is a language spoken by the Pirahã — an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, who live along the Maici river, a tributary of the Amazon.

Pirahã is believed to be the only surviving member of the Mura language family, all other members having become extinct in the last few centuries. It is therefore a language isolate, without any known connection to other languages. Despite having only ~150 speakers as of 2004, in eight villages along the Maici, it is not itself in immediate danger of extinction, as language use is vigorous and the Pirahã community is monolingual.

The Pirahã language has a number of unusual linguistic features. One of them, a seeming lack of number words, makes Pirahã a fascinating test case of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and more generally of the link between language and cognition.

However, in spite of its notoriety, little field work has been conducted on this language. The published Pirahã corpus is very limited, and even its most striking attributes are awaiting independent confirmation and more detailed analysis.

Contents

Linguistic features

Unusual features of Pirahã include:

The occurrence of so many unusual linguistic features in a single language is remarkable.

Phonology

The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically simplest languages known, claimed to have as few as ten phonemes (one fewer than Rotokas). However, this requires analysing [k] as an underlying /hi/. Although there are words where a speaker may substitute [k] for [hi], theoretically extending this to the entire language is a rather dubious proposition. Some linguists have wondered whether the excessively small inventory of Pirahã is at least partially an artifact of the linguistic analysis, motivated by a desire to find a minimal system, rather than an accurate representation of the language.

The 'ten phoneme' claim also does not consider the three tones, at least two of which are phonemic (marked by an acute accent and either unmarked or marked by a grave accent). Sheldon (1988) claims three tones, high (¹), mid (²) and low(³).

Phoneme inventory

When languages have inventories as small and allophonic variation as great as in Pirahã and Rotokas, different linguists may have very different ideas as to the nature of their phonological systems.

Vowels

Front Back vowel
High
Mid
Low

Consonants

The segmental phonemes are:

Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal
Stop Voiceless
Voiced
Fricative Voiceless
[k] has been claimed to be an optional portmanteau of /hi/. Women sometimes substitute /h/ for /s/.

 Pirahã Consonants with Example Words
Phoneme Phone Word
/t/
/i/ tii “residue”
kaaxai “macaw”
kaaxai “macaw”
/b/ xísoobái “down (noun)”
boopai “throat, neck”
/g/ xopóogií “inga (fruit)”
gáatahaí “can (noun)”
/s/
/i/
xáapahai “bird arrow”

The number of phonemes is thirteen if [k] is counted as a phoneme and there are just two tones; if [k] is not phonemic, there are twelve phonemes, one more than the number found in Rotokas. (English, by comparison, has about thirty to forty-five, depending on dialect). However, many of these sounds show a great deal of allophonic variation. For instance, vowels are nasalized after the glottal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ (written h and x). Also,

/b/ [b, ʙ, m]: the nasal [m] after a pause, the trill [ʙ] before /o/.
/g/ [g, n, ɺ͡ɺ̼]: the nasal [n] after a pause (an apical alveolar nasal); [ɺ͡ɺ̼] is a lateral alveolar-linguolabial double flap that has only been reported for this language, where the tongue strikes the upper gum ridge and then strikes the lower lip. However, it is only used in certain special types of speech performances, and so might not be considered a normal speech sound.
/s/ [s, h]: in women's speech, /s/ occurs as [h] before [i], and "sometimes" elsewhere.
/k/ [k, p, h, ʔ]: in men's speech, word-initial [k] and [ʔ] are interchangeable. For many people, [k] and [p] may be exchanged in some words. The sequences [hoa] and [hia] are said to be in free variation with [kʷa] and [ka], at least in some words.
Because of its variation, Everett states that /k/ is not a stable phoneme. By analysing it as /hi/, he is able to theoretically reduce the number of consonants to seven.

Because of the consonant chart above, Pirahã is sometimes said to be one of the few languages without nasals. However, an alternate analysis is possible. By analysing the [g] as /n/ and the [k] as /hi/, it could also be claimed to be one of the very few languages without velars:[[Citing sources citation needed]]

Bilabial Alveolar Glottal
Stop
Nasal
Fricative

The bilabial trill

In 2004, linguist D. L. Everett, the foremost authority in Pirahã, discovered that the language uses a voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate, [t͡ʙ̥]. He conjectures that the Pirahã had not used that phone in his presence before because they were ridiculed whenever non-Pirahã heard the sound. The occurrence of [t͡ʙ̥] in Pirahã is all the more remarkable considering that the only other languages known to use it are the unrelated Chapacura-Wanham languages Oro Win and Wari’, spoken some 500 km west of the Pirahã area. Oro Win too is a nearly extinct language (surviving only as the second language of a dozen or so members of the Wari’ tribe) which was discovered by Everett in 1994 [link].

Lexicon

Pirahã has a few loan words, mainly from Portuguese. Pirahã "kóópo" ("cup") is from the Portuguese word "copo", and "bikagogia" ("business") comes from Portuguese "mercadoria".

Kinship terms

The Pirahã culture has the simplest known kinship system of any human culture. A single word, baíxi (pronounced [màíʔì]), is used for both mother and father, and they appear not to keep track of relationships any more distant than biological siblings.

Numerals

Pirahã is unusual among the world's languages today in having no numerals, although this appears to have been more common before the spread of modern trade and technology. There are apparently only three words that roughly describe quantity, somewhat akin to "a few", "some", and "many." There is no grammatical distinction between singular and plural, even in pronouns (see below). There is little distinction between individuated quantities and mass quantities, although this in and of itself is not so uncommon among languages. It is not thought to be possible to distinguish between, for example, one big fish and several small fish. However, it might well be the case that researchers simply have not yet learned how to make the distinction.

Color terms

There is also a disputed claim that Pirahã lacks any colour terminology, being one of the few cultures (mostly in the Amazon basin and New Guinea) that only have specific words for light and dark [link]. However, the Pirahã glossary in D. L. Everett's Ph. D. thesis includes a list of colors words (page 346).

Straight lines

It has also been claimed that Pirahã lacks a word for the geometric sense of "straight".

Grammar

Pronouns

The basic Pirahã personal pronouns are ti "I", gíxai [níʔàì] "you (singular)", hi "s/he, they". These can be serially combined: ti gíxai or ti hi to mean "we" (inclusive and exclusive), and gíxai hi to mean "you (plural)". There are several other pronouns reported, such as 'she', 'it' (animal), 'it' (aquatic animal), and 'it' (inanimate), but these may actually be nouns. The fact that different linguists come up with different lists of such pronouns suggests that they are not basic to the grammar.

Sheldon (1988) gives the following list of pronouns:

ti³ "I"
gi¹xai³ "you" (sing.)
hi³ "he" (human)
i³ "she" (human)
i¹k "it", "they" (animated non-human non-aquatic)
si³ "it", "they" (animated non-human aquatic)
a³ "it", "they" (non-animated)
ti³a¹ti³so³ "we"
gi¹xa³i¹ti³so³ "you" (pl.)
hi³ai¹ti³so³ "they" (human?)
Pronouns are prefixed to the verb, in the order SUBJECT-INDOBJECT-OBJECT where INDOBJECT includes a preposition "to", "for", etc. They may all be omitted. E.g. hi³-ti³-gi¹xai³-bi²i³b-i³ha³i¹ "he will send you to me".

For possession, a pronoun is used:

    paitá hi xitóhoi
Paita s/he testicles

"Paita's testicles"

Verbs

Pirahã is agglutinative, using a large number of affixes to communicate grammatical meaning. Even the 'to be' verbs of existence or equivalence are suffixes in Pirahã. For instance, the Pirahã sentence "there is a paca there" uses just two words; the "is" is a suffix on "paca":

    káixihíxao-xaagá gáihí
paca-exists there

"There's a paca there"
Pirahã also uses suffixes which communicate evidentiality, a category which English grammar lacks. One such suffix, -xáagahá, means that the speaker actually observed the event in question:

    hoagaxóai hi páxai kaopápi-sai-xáagahá
Hoaga'oai s/he [a fish] catch-ing-(I saw it)

"Hoaga'oai caught a pa'ai fish (I can tell you because I saw it)"
(The suffix -sai turns a verb into a noun, like English '-ing'.)

Other verbal suffixes indicate that an action is deduced from circumstantial evidence, or based on hearsay. Unlike in English, in Pirahã a speaker must state their source of information: they cannot be ambiguous. There are also verbal suffixes that indicate desire to perform an action, frustration in completing an action, or frustration in even starting an action.

There are also a large number of verbal aspects: perfective (completed) vs. imperfective (incompleted), telic (reaching a goal) vs. atelic, continuing, repeated, and commencing. However, despite this complexity, there appears to be little distinction of transitivity. For example, the same verb, xobai, can mean either 'look' or 'see', and xoab can mean either 'die' or 'kill'.

According to Sheldon (1988), the Pirahã verb has 8 main suffix slots, and a few sub-slots:

Slot A:
: intensive ba³i¹
: Ø
Slot B:
: causative/incompletive bo³i¹
: causative/completive bo³ga¹
: icoative/incompletive ho³i¹
: icoative/completive hoa³ga¹
: future/somewhere a²i³p.
: future/elsewhere a²o³p
: past a²o³b
: Ø
Slot C:
: negative/optative sa³i¹ + C1
:: Slot C1:
::: preventive ha³xa³
::: opinionated ha³
::: possible Ø
: positive/optative a³a¹ti³
: negativeIindicative hia³b + C2
: positiveIndicative Ø + C2
:: Slot C2:
::: declarative a¹
::: probabilistic/certain i³ha³i¹
::: probabilistic/uncertain/beginning a³ba³ga³i¹
::: probabilistic/uncertain/execution a³ba³i¹
::: probabilistic/uncertain/completion a³a¹
::: stative i²xi³
::: interrogative1/progressive i¹hi¹ai¹
::: interrogative2/progressive o¹xoi¹hi¹ai¹
::: interrogative1 i¹hi¹
::: interrogative2 o¹xoi¹hi¹
::: Ø
Slot D:
: continuative xii³g
: repetitive ta³
: Ø
Slot E:
: immediate a¹ha¹
: intentive i³i¹
: Ø
Slot F:
: durative a³b
: Ø
Slot G:
: desiderative so³g
: Ø
Slot H:
: causal ta³i¹o³
: conclusive si³bi³ga³
: emphatic/reiterative koi + H1
: emphatic ko³i¹ + H1
: reiterative i³sa³ + H1
: Ø + H1
:: Slot H1:
::: present i³hi¹ai³
::: past i³xa¹a³ga³
::: pastImmediate a³ga³ha¹
These suffixes undergo some phonetic changes depending on context. For instance, the continuative xii³g reduces to ii³g after a consonant, e.g. in ai³t-a¹b-xii³g-a¹ → ai³ta¹bii³ga¹ "he is still sleeping".

Also an epenthetic vowel gets inserted between two suffixes if necessary to avoid a consonant cluster; the vowel is either i³ (before or after s, p, or t) or a³ (other cases), e.g. o³ga³i¹ so³g-sa³i¹ → o³ga³i¹ so³gi³sa³i¹ "he possibly may not want a field".

Conversely, when the junction of two morphemes creates a double vowel (ignoring tones), the vowel with lowest tone is supressed: si³-ba¹-bo³-ga³-a¹ → si³ba¹bo³ga¹ "he caused the arrow to wound it".

For further details, see Sheldon's 1988 paper.

Embedding

In order to embed one clause within another, the embedded clause is turned into a noun with the -sai suffix seen above:

    hi ob-áaxái kahaí kai-sai
s/he knows-really arrow make-ing

"He really knows how to make arrows" (literally, 'he really knows arrow-making')
    ti xog-i-baí gíxai kahaí kai-sai
I want-this-very.much you arrow make-ing
"I'd really like you to make arrows" (lit., 'I really like/want your arrow-making')
Everett claims that this structure makes it impossible to embed more than one clause in Pirahã, such as "He knows that I'd like you to make arrows". However, such claims are unverified.

Pirahã and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Without numerals, the Pirahã do not count. They use only approximate measures, and in tests were unable to consistently distinguish between a group of four objects and a similarly-arranged group of five objects. When asked to duplicate groups of objects, they duplicate the number correctly on average, but almost never get the number exactly in a single trial.

Being (correctly) concerned that, because of this cultural gap, they were being cheated in trade, the Pirahã people asked a linguist that was working with them to teach them basic numeracy skills. It is said that after eight months of enthusiastic but fruitless daily study, the linguists concluded that they were incapable of learning the material, and discontinued the lessons. During this time supposedly not a single Pirahã had learned to count up to ten or to add 1 + 1. However, the use of candy as rewards calls into question whether the Pirahã were actually at the study sessions to learn to count.

Miscellaneous

As of 2004, most of the remaining Pirahã speakers were monolingual, knowing only a few words of Portuguese. It is the belief of the Pirahã people that their language is the best one to speak, so there seems to be no immediate danger of Pirahã dying out.

References

The first fieldwork on Pirahã was conducted by Steven N. Sheldon in the 1970 under the auspices of the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, FUNAI, and the University of Brasília. The bulk of what we know about Pirahã is due to fieldwork by Daniel L. Everett and Keren Madora Everett during a total of seven years of residence with the Pirahã at intervals since 1979. The Everetts are the only non-native speakers of the language.

External links

 

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