Talk:Pirahã language/Archive 1

Archive 1

Music/Whistling/Humming?

The article says that "Pirahã can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music" in the first section, titled "Linguistic Features." It never mentions music again. Who found this, and why hasn't he (or she) put any more information about it? Because wow, that's really interesting, and I'd love to read more about it... if it's true. Zhankfor

Abbreviations

Could someone explain exactly what this translation means?

H. he fish-species catch.EPEN.NOMIN.certaint

The abbreviations seem to be a bit too technical to really understand. Maybe some links to the appropriate articles on grammatical features? Peter Isotalo 21:19, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

With just a few examples, it's not really necessary to abbreviate at all. Might be more accessible now. kwami 09:30, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

Use of [s] according to sex

Dan Everett told me himself that [s] is only found in the speech of men, and not that women "sometimes" substituted [h], but that this was an essentially universal thing among women. Also, just because there is a large variety of allophones does not preclude the existence of a very small phonemic system; in the Kabardian language, over twenty different vowel allophones have been noted, but most linguists agree that Kabardian has only three phonemic vowels - possibly two. - thefamouseccles 04:04, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm going off my notes of Everett's published account in the Amazonian Handbook, and of a summary of it in Dixon & Aikenvald. Unfortunately, I don't have the original with me. D&A paraphrase him with, "Everett (1986) states that women articulate /s/ as [h], always before /i/ and sometimes elsewhere." Either they're misquoting him, or he's changed his mind. Either way I'd like something verifiable.

I'm not arguing that the small inventory is doubtful due to extensive allophony. Rotokas appears to be fairly straightforward that way. What bothers some linguists is that there appears to be an attempt to reduce the Piraha inventory however possible, as if that were the primary aim. For instance, [k] and [h] may be interchangeable in some words, but that may not mean that they're allophones. I've yet to hear of any published data showing that this is characteristic of these two phones, and that minimal pairs are not possible. Rather it seems to be as if you were to look at English, note that the plural of roof is sometimes [rufs], sometimes [ruvz], that this occurs elsewhere in the language, and therefore deduce that [f] and [v] are allophones. Piraha is Everett's claim to fame, he's quite excited about it having the smallest inventory on the planet, and that makes some people wonder if in his excitement he might be getting carried away. Not saying that he's mistaken, just that's there's reasonable doubt. It would be nice to have his claims verified, not that that's likely in the near term. As with the claims that !kung and =/hoa have 100+ consonants, it's prudent to sound a note of caution. kwami 09:30, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

is this a hoax?

This whole thing sounds a great deal about that tribe that had no word for "war", which turned out to be a hoax. I'd be unsurprised to find that this was some linguist's wish list for cool things to have in a language.

That's why I put weasle words in the phonology section. There's no doubt that Piraha has a very small sound inventory, and that their material culture is quite sparse, but some linguists have wondered aloud whether Everett has been motivated (consciously or unconsciously) by the desire for it to be the "most" of whatever he's investigating. Since the Piraha are monolingual, there are a couple problems here: they can't comment on the claims being made about their language, and no other linguist can verify them either.

The number stuff is not unreasonable. A hundred years ago there were many forager populations who had no numerals, and no counting, and there are plenty of references to, say, bargaining two sheaves of tobacco for a goat. However, you couldn't then trade four sheaves for two goats without the person thinking he's being tricked; you had to trade two for the first goat, then two more for the second goat. So the idea that the Piraha are completely innumerate is not farfetched. (Whether the videos of them really show them having the level of difficulty that Everett claims is another matter.)

Much of the syntax stuff is also not necessarily unreasonable, but I'm highly doubtful that it has the cognitive implications that Everett gives it. Couple that with the very strong possibility that Everett has misunderstood much of what he's describing (since the working language is Piraha, which he doesn't speak well), and the whole thing has to be taken with a very large grain of salt. But no, it doesn't appear to be deception on Everett's part. kwami 06:20, 2005 August 17 (UTC)

A very similar study was done on Chinese, who allegedly don't have any constructions for hypotheticals. A test was conducted, of comprehension: explain a hypothetical situation, and ask whether it actually happened or not. As expected, native Chinese speakers did poorly compared with English speakers. Then, problems with the Chinese rendition of the text started to appear. A better translation was made, the test was rerun, and this time, both groups did equally well. ( Pinker - The Language Instinct ) I have doubts that one person, a non-native speaker of the language, making extraordinary claims which haven't panned out in other cases, is enough evidence in this case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.138.32.33 (talk) 21:06, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with this at all. First, I don't think it is true that Everett doesn't speak Piraha well. Although certainly not a native speaker, he appears to be quite fluent. Second, it isn't the case that only he has access to the data. To begin with, his wife, Keren, is also a linguist (and a native speaker of another Amazonian language), and she participated in this work. Furthermore, other linguists and anthropologists have at times visited the Piraha. Finally, the small inventory of Piraha is hardly Everett's claim to fame. He has done considerable work on other languages and in any case the small inventory is by no means the most interesting thing about Piraha nor is it of particular theoretical interest. Bill 11:21, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

He has himself complained that because the Piraha are monolingual, he's found it difficult to verify his conclusions. He may be fluent with basic conversation, but I think he may have a valid concern about his ability to draw conclusions on the subtleties of the language, when no native speaker is able to verify what he's said.

The small inventory thing is the impression I've heard from other linguists. Doesn't mean he's incorrect, of course. kwami 19:10, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Pirahã and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: I don't believe this section is neutral. Language is not the only form of communication. Just because the Piraha have no sounds or tones to describe colors or numbers, that doesn't mean that they don't communicate about them. Perhaps there is some method other than their traditional language through which they express it (touch, sight, thoughts, etc.) that has not been picked up on.Guava 03:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Proper name

I've seen a reasonable number of references to Pirahã in linguistic literature, but never once have I seen it called Múra-Pirahã. So what's the deal? As far as I've understood the Múra concerns the family classification, but has nothing to do with any commonly used name for the language. Any comments?

Peter ^Isotalo 03:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

That was an Ethnologue 14 thing, to recognize that the Piraha are just one of the peoples who speak (or spoke) the language, but even Ethnologue's switched over. Shall we move this to Pirahã language? kwami 05:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Definetly. And we should move Pirahã to Pirahã people and make a dabpage while we're at it.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Khoikhoi 22:46, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

No numerals

The claim that languages with no numerals were once much more common is to my knowledge unfounded. It's plausible, but I've seen no actual evidence of this cited. Bill 11:21, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

A century or so ago there were quite a few languages recorded as having no numerals, but they've mostly either gone extinct, or have borrowed numerals from colonial languages. Piraha is one of the few remnants of this situation. kwami 19:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

that's interesting. can you give names of other langs? thanks – ishwar  (speak) 19:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Can't find an electronic version of what I had written up. Ifrah discusses some of this. At the beginning of the 20th century, quite a few languages only had words for alone/single and pair/couple: Ifrah gives the Saan, Pygmies, Zulu [sic!], Veddas, Torres Straight Islanders, Oz (Murray Islanders, Aranda, Gamilaraai), Botocudo, 'Fuegians', and 'many other "traditional" communities'. These words are sometimes translated as 'one' and 'two', but this is misleading in that it implies a system of numerals. All refs I've seen say such people could 'count to four' (in other words, that they could say a couple of pairs), but could not conceptualize any number greater than this. For five and above, the Botocudo for example would simply point to their hair for 'many'. There are many accounts of attempts to teach such people to count ending in failure, and how that many "primitive" people had no concept of number other than immediately perceptible quantity. (Interestingly, other people did extend one-two to a counting system, saying two-two-two-one for seven, etc; evidently such people would notice if you removed one item from a pile of seven, but were much less likely to notice if you removed a pair.) Gordon in his Science article says, "there are cultures that base their counting systems on a small number between 2 and 4. Sometimes, the use of a small-number base is recursive and potentially infinite."

Piraha has at least one of these words, hóiihíi 'single, one', according to the dictionary linked from the article. I guess the question is whether it has a word for a couple (can it describe a mated couple as a couple?), and if this is ever used in combination. If it doesn't, then it might indeed be more limited in expressing number than any other known language, even if it's not the only language without numerals. I find it interesting also that the word for one is similar to other quantity words, hói 'few' and hoí 'some', suggesting there might be some sort of sound symbolism going on. As for "number", there's also a word gónííso for 'how many'.

Gordon states that Piraha has a "one-two-many counting system. [...] The Pirahã counting system consists of the words: hói (falling tone = "one") and hoí (rising tone = "two"). [...] There was no recursive use of the count system—the Pirahã never used the count words in combinations like hói-hoí to designate larger quantities. [...] Fingers were used to supplement oral enumeration, but this was highly inaccurate even for small numbers less than five. In addition, hói and hoí, the words for "one" and "two", were not always used to denote those quantities. Whereas the word for "two" always denoted a larger quantity than the word for "one" (when used in the same context), the word for "one" was sometimes used to denote just a small quantity such as two or three or sometimes more. [An example of 7 is explained as 'one more' when counting; don't know about other instances. ...] hói appears to designate "roughly one" — or a small quantity whose prototype is one. Most of the time, in the enumeration task, hói referred to one, but not always. An analogy might be when we ask for "a couple of Xs" in English, where the prototypical quantity is two, but we are not upset if we are given three or four objects. However, we surely would be upset if given only one object, because the designation of a single object has a privileged status in our language. There is no concept of "roughly one" in a true integer system. Even the informal use of the indefinite article "a X" strictly requires a singular reference. In Pirahã, hói can also mean "small," which contrasts with ogii (= big), suggesting that the distinction between discrete and continuous quantification is quite fuzzy in the Pirahã language."

With no other one-two-many counting system surviving today (that we know of), it may not be possible to tell if the Piraha are unique in the fuzziness of their number words. Their lack of recursive numbering up to four does seem unique, but the experiments so far have been geared at teaching them to count and add up to ten, not up to four. kwami 23:03, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Just re your languages without numerals: Zulu has two sets of numbers, the indigenous ones and the ones borrowed from English. These days it's almost always teh ENglish ones used, but there was another system before that. Also, the Australian systems are all one, two, three, many. And of course there's Adnyamathanha, with no numerals above three but birth-order names that go up to ten! Claire 16:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

For those who suspect that this is a hoax, you may want to read this [1]. It is quite "persuasive". Sinan

In the article, there is a claim that the researchers offered candy to motivate speakers to counting classes. However, see the following from Everett's paper, [2]: "After eight months of daily efforts, without ever needing to call them to come for class (all meetings were started by them with much enthusiasm), the people concluded that they could not learn this material, and classes were abandoned." I think that the expression should be changed and the sentence "However, the use of candy as rewards calls into question whether the Pirahã were actually at the study sessions to learn to count." should be removed. Sinan

Velarlessness

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

Was this said in one of the references given on the page? It sounds amateurish — what symbol you choose to represent a particular range of allophones doesn't really mean much. --Ptcamn 00:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Precisely the point. It's hypothetical, and perhaps could be worded better. Piraha is frequently cited as a rare example of a language without nasals, simply because Everett chose to represent {n, g} as the phoneme /g/. If he had chosen to analyse it as /n/, then these same people would claim that Piraha has no velars. (Everett suggests the analysis of /hi/ for [k].) There are languages without nasal stops, but the examples in the Amazon (like Piraha) and West Africa aren't very convincing, since they're chock-full of nasal allophones. kwami 01:50, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I supervised someone's thesis on an Amazonian language with stop/nasal allophones. It was very weird, but they really did occur in free variation, as if speakers just didn't give a damn about whether their velum was up or down. It's still striking, and interesting from the typological/categorisation point of view. Claire 16:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Pronoun borrowing

To user kwami: you objected to the observation that "the impossibility of pronoun borrowing was at one point thought to be absolute, a language universal". I thought that I had read that in some web article or posting discussing the Pirahã case. However, I cannot find that ref now, and I may have misremembered. What it probably said was that, since the Pirahã borrowed all their pronouns from Tupi, they must have lacked them before; and *that* — a language without pronouns — is what was thought to be impossible.

You also mentioned pronoun borrowing in Spanish/Portuguese. What specifically, "você"/"usted"? I am vaguely aware of English "they". But those examples are from closely related languages, and lots of other words were borrowed too — isn't that so?

All the best, Jorge Stolfi 21:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jorge,

There is an implicational universal that pronouns are resistant to borrowing, that's now thought to perhaps be a regional feature. Yes, English they (from Danish) and Spanish usted (from Arabic). True, a lot of other words were borrowed in those cases. There are cases in PNG where pronouns in unrelated languages are similar but with their gender reversed, without extensive borrowing of other terms (or so I remember). It is unusual, perhaps unique (or maybe not - PNG again), for a language to borrow its entire pronoun inventory, but that doesn't mean that it didn't have any personal pronouns before then! (English, after all, had a pronoun for 'they', and Spanish still does have a couple for 'you'.) Other languages lack pronouns - Keres is one, I believe, and Ika another - but they have inflections for person. It would be unique for a language to lack both pronouns and person inflection, but it's highly speculative to suggest that was once the case for Piraha. kwami 05:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I had been told that both Spanish "usted" and Portuguese "você" derive from the expression "Your Mercy" ("Vuestra Merced" in Sp, "Vossa Mercê" in Pt). The Pt derivation must be correct because the intermediate form "Vosmecê" is still known and understod (albeit quite obsolete, like En "thou"). AFAIK these alternate pronouns developed well after the two languages had diverged, but while the countries still had many cultural and political ties. I suppose that the custom of calling people by indirect 3rd person expressions first spread through feudal Europe across language barriers, and then the changes "Vuestra Merced-->usted" and "Vossa Mercê-->você" occurred separately in Sp and Pt, possibly through grammatical/stylistic imitation (but without any lexical borrowing). But I may be all wrong...

Jorge Stolfi 14:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Correct for Portuguese. Maybe I shouldn't be so hasty about the Spanish. It's what I was taught in school, and I thought it was a folk etymology. It's just about identical in pronunciation to the common Arabic respectful term of address ’ustēð, which means pretty much the same thing (though it's not a pronoun), but I've found several (non-academic) claims to the contrary:

[3]Some people have wondered if the Spanish formal second person pronoun Usted came from the Arabic honorific 'usta:dh. It doesn't; it's a well-attested abbreviation of vuestra merced 'your mercy'. There are transitional forms such as vuasted, vuesarced, voarced as well as parallel constructions like usía from vuestra señoría, ucencia from vuestra excelencia. Compare also Portuguese vossa mercê → vosmecê → você, as well as Catalán vosté and Gallego vostede. Finally, note that the abbreviation Usted doesn't appear until 130 years after the Moors had been kicked out of Spain.

[4] La aparición de "vuestra merced" tuvo lugar hacia la primera mitad del siglo XV y su evolución fonética comprende una larga serie de formas documentadas ("vuessa merçed", "vuesarçed", "vuesançed", "vourçed", "vuerçed", "vuarçed", "voaçed", "vueçed", "vuaçed", "vuçed", "uçed", "vuesansted", "vuesasted", "vosasted", "vuested", "vuasted", "vusted" y, finalmente, "usted", documentado por primera vez en 1620 en "El examinador de Miser Palomo" de Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza).

My Larousse dictionary gives the same etymology. I still wonder if the Arabic might have influenced the development of "vuçed"-like forms, since they started in the 12th century, but it seems that one-word forms are only attested from the 16th [5]. kwami 19:38, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the statement about pronoun borrowing in several ways. To begin with, the claim is that the loans are specifically from Nheengatu, the lingua franca. Secondly, there is in fact next to no controversy about this among Amazonianists, and I note that none of the references cited contain such controversy. The only controversy about it that I am aware of is on the part of people who deny on general principles the possibility of pronoun borrowing. The claim that the borrowing of the pronouns is rendered implausible by a lack of documentation of a lack of pronouns in an earlier stage of the language is ridiculous. To begin with, we have no documentation of any sort of an earlier stage of the language. Secondly, this argument assumes the premise that words are borrowed only when they have no native equivalents. This premise is well known to be false. (Among many examples are English "they" and "them", borrowed from Old Norse. Any grammar of Old English will show that English had words of the same meaning.) For further discussion both of Piraha in particular and pronoun borrowing in general see the paper by Thomason and Everett that I have added to the references.Bill 11:03, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Shelters

To Kwami: I had seen Everett's photos of the Pirahã shelters. Well, you are right, I suppose that I those things do satisfy the formal definition of the term. I should have written "nothing that a civilized person would call shelter", or something to that effect. The point is that DLE could not possibly find accomodation anywhere near the Pirahã. He does not tell those details on his thesis, only that he spent ~5 hours per day with the Pirahã — 2 hours of elicitation, and ~3 hours walking around in "perambulatory elicitation". I suppose that he either camped in a barrack or commuted daily by boat to the nearest town. Jorge Stolfi 00:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they're what I would call 'difficult field conditions'. But saying the Piraha have no shelter makes it sound like they sit in the rain all night getting wet, with no fire to keep them warm. Many Amazonian peoples sleep in hammocks with an unwalled thatched roof to keep them dry, and it's quite comfortable. Not great for field equipment maybe, but not like being homeless. Though I don't know how dry a roof that small would keep you! kwami 05:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

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]....The occurrence of [t͡ʙ̥] in Pirahã is all the more remarkable considering that the only other languages known to use it are the unrelated Chapakuran languages Oro Win and Wari’, spoken some 500 km west of the Pirahã area. Oro Win too is a nearly extinct language ... which was discovered by Everett in 1994 [6]."

So...this sound has only been found in languages which Everett is one of the leading authorities in? --Whimemsz 23:10, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Everett isn't the only one who can vouch for its existence, though. A elicitation session of Oro Win recorded by Peter Ladefoged et al. and can be found here. Incidentally, that recording is released under a Creative Commons, so we could use it for Wikipedia. --Ptcamn 23:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I don't really think Everett has (intentionally) made false statements. But it's definitely a weird coincidence. I should have been more clear. Thanks for pointing out the recording! --Whimemsz 00:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

A weird coincidence that languages found in the same area share certain similarities? Uh, yeah.. --Ptcamn 00:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Weird is only that it isn't very likely for the Pirahã and the Wari'/Oro Win to have come into contact. Everett gave some reasons for this which I unfortunately don't remember anymore... I think one was the fact that the contact between the Pirahã and other peoples was relatively small — apparently too small for such a quirk to get adopted. —N-true 00:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

In fact, Ladefoged went to the area under a NSF grant specifically to investigate this sound, as well as the oddly skewed vowel inventory of Wari’, so it's demonstrably there. kwami 01:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

"Same area" may be rather relative. Unless I misread something somewhere, the Pirahã and the Oro Win are separated by some 500-1000 km of rainforest and dozens of major rivers, and there is no reason to think that languages are related. BTW, Everett discovered that the Pirahã had the bilabial trill only in ~1994, after studing the Oro Win, some 12 years after his main work on the Pirahã.

I also see that, according to one of the articles linked to from the page, "Everett theorizes that the two languages share the [/t͡ʙ̥/] sound because, according to the Piraha, some Indians who spoke the now-extinct Tora language -- which is related to Wari -- intermarried with the Piraha." Forget I even said anything..... --Whimemsz 21:53, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Do audio samples exist?

It would be great if the article could incorporate some sample audio. I'd really like to hear what this language sounds like. Also, under the linguistic features section in the article, it says that two very rare sounds, [ɺ͡ɺ̼] and [t͡ʙ̥] are included in the language. What are these and how are they pronounced? - Christopher 09:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I just added a few, and will upload more later (if I remember to). None of the particular weird sounds, unfortunately, though. --Ptcamn 15:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Nice to hear some audio. Please remember to use the audio template so one can easily check the file info. Also consider uploading the files to Commons so that all Wikipedias can make use of them.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Hey, what happened to the sound samples? It seems like they may have been deleted because they weren't in the right format or something. --Cnadolski 15:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

They were deleted because they were released under a non-commerical license. --Ptcamn 18:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm still interested in those audio samples, I've never heard it spoken. Can anyone provide *any* links? — N-true 12:46, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

They used to be here, but it doesn't seem to be up anymore. Weird. Other languages still work. --Ptcamn 12:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for looking. I have found something myself in the meantime: On Everett's homepage there's one sample of a short Pirahã utterance/singing — I think I'll link that file into the article, if that is okay. — N-true 13:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow

One of the most fascinating language articles I've read in Wikipedia. Maybe the most. Never heard of this tongue before. It's unbelievable.

Just wanted to say. :-D

Embedding how many clauses?

"Everett claims that this structure makes it impossible to embed more than one clause in Piraha, such as 'He knows that I'd like you to make arrows'. However, such claims are unverified."

Especially when as I see it, the Pirahã paradigm of turning noun clauses into gerund phrases could produce something like this: "He knows my liking of your making arrows." --Damian Yerrick (☎) 12:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the point is not that the Piraha couldn't say such things, but that they never do. kwami 17:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Does the paradigm of turning noun clauses into gerund phrases extend to nouns derived from verbs with the -sai suffix? Have you looked into this? It's possible that such an utterance may sound as ill-formed in Pirahã as the English, "Forbear to desire of to have." It's fine to make conjectures of what a language could do hypothetically, but we should really look more in depth at the grammar (or do field research) first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.158.34.248 (talk) 06:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. I think the point is more that the recursive embedding of clauses or verb phrases is (claimed to be) impossible - as opposed to noun phrases. Garik 17:20, 29 April 2006 BST.

Notoriety?

The leader at the top of this article reads:

However, in spite of its notoriety, little field work has been conducted on this language.

Is something like noteworthiness rather than notoriety meant here? Notoriety/notorious means the same thing as 'infamous' -- being well-known for something bad.

I didn't go ahead and change the page in case I'm missing something and notoriety is intended.

That's a connotation, not a denotation. Literally notorious is synonymous with famous and noteworthy. Go ahead and change it if you want to, though. —Keenan Pepper 16:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Connotations are mostly a product of context. While the negative aspect of notorious may originally have been connotative, it's by now become lexicalized. kwami 08:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. I'd strongly disagree that notorious is literally synonomous with famous and noteworthy in modern usage. Garik 17:22, 29 April 2006 (BST)

References intro

I've corrected the claims about the Everetts' fieldwork in the references section. I don't know where the claim that it lasted only 14 months comes from, but that is not true. That is just the initial bit of work. The Everetts have lived with the Piraha for seven years out of the past 27 years. I've also eliminated the statement that Dan Everett's dissertation is the only published comprehensive grammar. It is not a comprehensive grammar. It is a treatment of the syntax. Bill 10:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Foundlings?

I've read accounts of some tribes in the Amazon abandoning old people to die in certain parts of the forest. It's not a big stretch to imagine that some tribes abandon sick children in the same way. Or alternatively, one tribe wiped out all the adults from another tribe, leaving only the kids. If those children were to survive, perhaps this language would result. - Xed 13:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

candy comment

The candy comment was completely inappropriate, rather offensive, and entirely inline with Gordon's ethnocentric linguistic determinism.

I wrote a paper on this subject; not sure if this is really the place for it... but whatever.

(essay moved to User:Galathrax/Pirahã essay)

This talk page isn't the place for it, but I don't think anyone will mind if you keep it on a subpage of your user page. —Keenan Pepper 15:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Portmanteau?

[k] has been claimed to be an optional portmanteau of /hi/.

Consulting Wikipedia's own explanation of portmanteaux, this makes no sense without further explanation of whether [k] and [hi] are words or morphemes. If they're phonemes (as they seem to be since the section is about phonetics), the word portmanteau isn't applicable, and another word (allophone?) should be substituted. --Armchairlinguist 00:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Right, it should be allophone. Either that or /hi/ is just the underlying phonemical form and [k] is its phonetical pronunciation (as in Japanese, where /si/ is always pronounced [ʃi] or something along these lines)? Don't know if that is called an allophone as well or if it is even the case here. — N-true 00:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

The concept of straightness in the Pirahã language

The Pirahã people article claims that they call themselves the "Hi'aiti'ihi', roughly translated as 'the straight ones'", but this article paradoxically claims that they have no word to convey the concept of straight. Do these to cases of “straight” carry diffirent meanings?

I agree with the above note. Whoever wrote that may have picked up on some exaggerations of what Everett actually said in his description of his literacy (and drawing) lessons: "In literacy classes, we were never able to train Pirahã even to draw a straight line without serious "coaching," and they were never able to repeat the feat in subsequent trials without more coaching (partially because they saw the entire process as fun and enjoyed the interaction but also because the concept of a 'correct' way to draw was profoundly foreign)." (Everett 2005: 12) Everett doesn't suggest that the Pirahã lack the concept of straight, and I think we can argue that they do have the concept: they build straight houses from straight sticks, and as the writer above says, they call themselves straight and foreigners crooked in a sense that exists also in English. I'm going to take it upon myself to delete that bit from the article. Brianlucas 00:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Name of the language

How to pronounce "Piraha"? Could somebody put the IPA for it please?--Fitzwilliam 10:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've always heard it as [piɾaˈhã], that's how Everett himself pronounces the language. — N-true 03:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Everett himself editing this article?

It appears that Everett himself, or someone who wishes to appear to be Everett, has edited this article, adding self-aggrandizing descriptions of himself and his work. He also represents very controversial claims as if they were established facts. I have taken some of this out, but the article still needs a good cleaning up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sklarvender (talk • contribs)

Best documented?

There's a statement in the article that Pirahã is "one of the best-documented Amazonian languages", citing Everett's grammar and two dozen articles as justification for this statement. I challenge that assertion: doesn't Everett say that one of the problems in convincing others of his more unusual claims is that besides him and his wife there are hardly any other linguists competent in the language? http://www.ethnologue.com provides an index of academic publications by language, and for Pirahã they list 18 publications, mostly by Everett. By way of comparison with other Amazonian languages, Tucano has 28, Guanano 22, Mbya Guarani 22, Kaingáng 18... The catalogue is not exhaustive, of course, but the sense I get from it is that Pirahã is not exceptional in the amount of study that has been devoted to it, and not necessarily better known than other languages, which is what I believe the previous claim to be saying. Therefore I've removed the sentence "Pirahã is thus one of the best documented of all Amazonian languages." Brianlucas 10:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

My impression too is that linguistic data on Pirahã is, in fact, quite scant. Given its eminent role in linguistic debates, that seems something to worry about.

As far as I can tell, there have been only two relatively independent linguistic studies of Pirahã. The first one was by Steven N. Sheldon, who spent some time among (or near) the Pirahã as a missionary for SIL. In 1988 he published a substantial description of the verbal system as a SIL linguistics report (summarized in this article). Sheldon apparently did not do any more work on the Pirahã; I recall seeing him listed in the SIL site, some 5-6 years ago, in some management position. Curiously the WP aricle on Daniel Everett states that, after taking a course at SIL "he was invited to study Pirahã, which the SIL faculty had failed to learn in 20 years of study".

The only other linguistic investigation of Pirahã was of course Everett's. He came to Brazil as a SIL missionary in 1977 but, due to political circumstances, left SIL and continued his research as a Ph.D. project here at UNICAMP, completed in 1983. His thesis includes a grammar of the language and a small dictionary. It should be noted that, except for Sheldon (with whom Daniel may have interacted, at least in the beginning), there was no one else in the world who could check his work — not even his thesis advisor, whose specialty was Portuguese Linguistics and who did not claim any expertise in indian languages. After obtaining his degree, Everett visited the Pirahã several times, spending several year in total among them. Although he has published several papers on specific topics, his thesis (AFAIK) is still the only broad description of the language as he knows it. AFAIK (and according Everett), other than him and his (ex-)wife, there are still no other non-native speakers of Pirahã, in Brazil or anywhere else in the world.

There seem to be significant differences between those two sources, and also between them and the later publications by Everett. For example, Sheldon claims that Pirahã has three tones, while Everett in his thesis recognizes only two. Granted, I am a mere computr scientist, but I have seen similar puzzlements expressed by reputable linguists. Some of the differences are understandable given the relatively short research time and the difficult conditions of his thesis work. But, whatever the reasons, it seems that there is no decently complete, peer-reviewed, and consensual description of the language. Isn't there a brave linguist in the world who dares to take up this challenge?

From a recent interview of Everett by the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo:

FOLHA - How has academy reacted to your ideas?

EVERETT - You've got four kinds of reaction. There are people who don't like Chomsky and will accept any argument against Chomsky; you've got the Chomskians, who will never ever accept any attack to the Universal Grammar; you've got the people who have envy, or resent, all the publicity I am having; and there are people who want to know where is the data. This is the most healthy reaction.

Well, so, yes — my dear linguists, where is the data?

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:17, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Phoneme count

I don't have time to sort this out myself at the moment, but at the top of the phonology section we have this:

"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/. If this analysis is not accepted, then Pirahã women have ten phonemes, but Pirahã men have eleven, equal to Rotokas and Hawaiian."

Then below the list of sample words in the same section, we have:

"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."

Not sure how this discrepancy got in there, but it probably ought to be straightened out.

The discrepancy appears to come from the tones being counted as phonemes below the list but not counted above the list. --YellowLeftHand 06:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Number of speakers

What is the source for the "~150" number given for Pirahã's total number of speakers? I've heard from a couple other sources that it's closer to 250-300. Cevlakohn 21:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I have too, so I changed it (anonymously by accident) LittleDan^talk 21:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Controversy

There's a lot of controversy about Piraha, and this article doesn't seem to cover it very well. In some places, it makes assertions of Everett's without noting that they aren't universally accepted. This should be updated, or an NPOV warning should be put up. LittleDan^talk 21:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The only counter-argument in the links is an apparent attempt to save Chomskyan UG, rather than a simple evaluation of Everett, which makes it suspect. However, there are plenty of functualists (who think UG is demonstrated nonsense without Piraha) who are also suspicious of Everett's claims. kwami (talk) 00:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Pirahã or Pirahă?

Just noticed that Everett himself in his "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahă" writes Pirahă with ă not ã. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.177.169.85 (talk) 08:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

That must be a font error... it's definitely ã. However, if one plays around with Character Encoding, an ã might come out as ă indeed, so it's the editors' mistake, most likely. — N-true (talk) 12:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Removed list of features

I removed a list of features as it seems to be redundant. Feel free to add it back if you feel this was an error. Liguisxack (talk) 05:26, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

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