Pirahã language

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.

Linguistic features

Unusual features of Pirahã include:

One of the smallest phoneme inventories of any known language (perhaps surpassed only by Rotokas), and a correspondingly high degree of allophonic variation, including two very rare sounds, and . Female speakers use seven consonants and three vowels, while male speakers have one consonant more at their disposal.
The pronunciation of several phonemes depends on the speaker's sex.
An extremely limited clause structure.
No grammatical numerals, not even "one" or "two"; the closest the language comes to numerals are general quantity words like 'many'.
No abstract color words other than terms for light and dark.
Few specific kin terms; one word covers both "father" and "mother".
The entire set of personal pronouns appears to have been borrowed from Nheengatu, the Tupi-based lingua franca. Although there is no documentation of a prior stage of Pirahã, the close resemblance of the Pirahã pronouns to those of Nheengatu makes any other hypothesis improbable.
Pirahã can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music.

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 as an underlying /hi/. Although there are words where a speaker may substitute ^*, 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:

		Glottal
Stop	Voiceless	"x"
Stop	Voiced
Fricative	Voiceless

has been claimed to be an optional portmanteau of . Women sometimes substitute for .

**Pirahã Consonants with Example Words**
Phoneme	Phone	Word
		“otter”
		“sand”
	before	tii “residue”
		kaaxai “macaw”
		kaaxai “macaw”
		xísoobái “down (noun)”
	initially	boopai “throat, neck”
		xopóogií “inga (fruit)”
	initially	gáatahaí “can (noun)”
	(see below)	“hoe”

	before	“fat (noun)”
		xáapahai “bird arrow”

The number of phonemes is thirteen if is counted as a phoneme and there are just two tones; if 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 and (written h and x). Also,

: the nasal after a pause, the trill before .

: the nasal ^* after a pause (an apical alveolar nasal); 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.

: in women's speech, occurs as before , and "sometimes" elsewhere.

: in men's speech, word-initial and are interchangeable. For many people, and may be exchanged in some words. The sequences and are said to be in free variation with and , at least in some words.

Because of its variation, Everett states that is not a stable phoneme. By analysing it as , 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 as and the as , it could also be claimed to be one of the very few languages without velars:

	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, . 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 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 ^*.

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 ), 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 ^*. 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 "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	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

Slot B:

causative/incompletive bo³i¹

causative/completive bo³ga¹

icoative/incompletive ho³i¹

icoative/completive hoa³ga¹

future/somewhere a²i³p.

future/elsewhere a²o³p

past a²o³b

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

Slot D:

continuative xii³g

repetitive ta³

Slot E:

immediate a¹ha¹

intentive i³i¹

Slot F:

durative a³b

Slot G:

desiderative so³g

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.

Dixon, R. M. W. and Alexandra Aikhenvald, eds., (1999) The Amazonian Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Everett, D. L. (1992) A Língua Pirahã e a Teoria da Sintaxe: Descrição, Perspectivas e Teoria (The Pirahã Language and Syntactic Theory: Description, Perspectives and Theory). Ph. D. thesis. (in Portuguese). Editora Unicamp, 400 pages; ISBN 85-268-0082-5.
Everett, Daniel, (1986) "Piraha". In the Handbook of Amazonian Languages, vol I. Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds). Mouton de Gruyter.
Everett, Daniel (1988) On Metrical Constituent Structure in Piraha Phonology. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 6: 207-246
Everett, Daniel and Keren Everett (1984) On the Relevance of Syllable Onsets to Stress Placement. Linguistic Inquiry 15: 705-711
Everett, Keren Madora (1998) Acoustic Correlates of Stress in Pirahã. The Journal of Amazonian Languages: 104-162. (Published version of University of Pittsburgh M.A. thesis.)
Sheldon, Steven M. (1974) Some morphophonemic and tone perturbation rules in Mura-Pirahã. International Journal of American Linguistics, v. 40 279–282.
Sheldon, Steven M. (1988) Os sufixos verbais Mura-Pirahã (Mura-Pirahã verbal suffixes). SIL International Série Lingüística Nº 9, Vol. 2: 147–175 PDF.
Thomason, Sarah G. and Daniel L. Everett (2001) Pronoun borrowing. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society 27. PDF.

External links

Everett, Daniel. Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language (PDF file)
Everett, Daniel. Home page
SIL Ethnologue Report
Pirahã Dictionary/ Dicionário Mura-Pirahã
Linguistics professor discovers new language in Brazilian rain forest. Pittsburgh University Times v. 27 n. 4 (1994).
Etnolinguistica.Org: discussion list on native South American languages
Unlocking the secret sounds of language: Life without time or numbers - article in The Independent
Brazil's Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time - Spiegel

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