Pirahã people
Total population | |
---|---|
800 | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Brazil | |
Languages | |
Pirahã | |
Religion | |
Animism[1] |
The Pirahã (pronounced
The Pirahã speak the Pirahã language. They call any other language "crooked head".[5] Members of the Pirahã can whistle their language, which is how Pirahã men communicate when hunting in the jungle.
Culture
According to the linguistic anthropologist and former Christian missionary Daniel Everett,
The Pirahã are supremely gifted in all the ways necessary to ensure their continued survival in the jungle: they know the usefulness and location of all important plants in their area; they understand the behavior of local animals and how to catch and avoid them; and they can walk into the jungle naked, with no tools or weapons, and walk out three days later with baskets of fruit, nuts, and small game.[5]
As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory. Pirahã have a simple kinship system that includes baíxi (parent, grandparent, or elder), xahaigí (sibling, male or female), hoagí or hoísai (son), kai (daughter), and piihí (stepchild, favorite child, child with at least one deceased parent, and more).[6]: 86–87
Daniel Everett states that one of the strongest Pirahã values is no coercion; one does not tell other people what to do.
Although the Pirahã use canoes every day for fishing and for crossing the river beside which they live, when their canoes wear out, they use pieces of bark as temporary canoes. Everett brought in a master builder who taught and supervised the Pirahã in making a canoe, so that they could make their own. However, when they needed another canoe, they said that "Pirahã do not make canoes" and told Everett he should buy them a canoe. The Pirahã rely on neighboring communities' canoe work, and use those canoes for themselves.[7]
Pirahã build simple huts where they keep a few pots, pans, knives, and machetes. They make only scraping implements (for making arrowheads), loosely woven palm-leaf bags, bows, and arrows.
They do not store food in any quantity, but generally eat it when they get it.
Their decoration is mostly necklaces, used primarily to
According to Everett, the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god,
Adoption of Western culture
A 2012 documentary called The Grammar of Happiness which aired on the
Language
Anthropological linguist Daniel Everett, who wrote the first Pirahã grammar, claims that there are related pairs of curiosities in their language and culture.[5]
After working with the language for 30 years, Everett states that it has no relative clauses or grammatical recursion. Everett points out that there is recursion of ideas: that in a story, there may be subordinate ideas inside other ideas. He also pointed out that different experts have different definitions of recursion.[7] If the language lacks grammatical recursion, then it is proposed as a counterexample to the theory proposed by Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch (2002) that recursion is a feature which all human languages must have.
Pirahã is perhaps second only to Rotokas in New Guinea for the distinction of having the fewest phonemes of any of the world's languages. Women sometimes pronounce s as h, reducing the inventory further still.[6]: 178–179. Everett states that Pirahã, Rotokas, and Hawaiian each have 11 phonemes.
Their language is a unique living language (it is related to
Curiously, although not unprecedentedly,[11] the language has no cardinal or ordinal numbers. Some researchers, such as Peter Gordon of Columbia University, claim that the Pirahã are incapable of learning numeracy. His colleague, Daniel L. Everett, on the other hand, argues that the Pirahã are cognitively capable of counting; they simply choose not to do so. They believe that their culture is complete and does not need anything from outside cultures. Everett says, "The crucial thing is that the Pirahã have not borrowed any numbers—and they want to learn to count. They asked me to give them classes in Brazilian numbers, so for eight months I spent an hour every night trying to teach them how to count. And it never got anywhere, except for a few of the children. Some of the children learned to do reasonably well, but as soon as anybody started to perform well, they were sent away from the classes. It was just a fun time to eat popcorn and watch me write things on the board."[7]
The language does not have words for precise numbers, but rather concepts for a small amount and a larger amount.
The language may have no
It is suspected that the language's entire
See also
Notes
- ^ According to Daniel Everett, it is pee-da-HAN.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Everett, Daniel. "From Threatened Languages to Threatened Lives".
- ^ "Interview: Wie ein Missionar zum Atheisten wurde". profil.at (in German). 2018-03-27. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
- ISBN 978-3-11-043273-2.
- ^ Pullum, Geoffrey K. (26 August 2004). "The Straight Ones: Dan Everett on the Pirahã". Language Log. Retrieved 2007-06-22.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Colapinto, John (16 April 2007). "The Interpreter—Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2024-02-14.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-375-42502-8.
- ^ a b c d e f g Everett, Daniel L. (11 June 2007). "Recursion and Human Thought: Why the Pirahã Don't Have Numbers". Conversation. Edge.org. Includes discussion by the Reality Club. Edge Foundation, Inc. Archived from the original on 8 August 2019. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
- ^ a b Gordon, Peter. Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia, Supporting Online Materials, p. 5. Science, 2004.
- ^ Everett, Daniel. "Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge" Archived 2010-05-16 at the Wayback Machine, The Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, March 20, 2009. For the relevant info, see transcript of the talk or play chapter 8 of the video at 33:40.
- ^ The Grammar of Happiness (television documentary). Smithsonian Channel. 2012. Archived from the original on 2013-11-18.
- ^ Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2004-08-26). "Language Log: The Straight Ones: Dan Everett on the Pirahã". Itre.cis.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2010-07-02.
- ^ Everett, Daniel (2007). "CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON GRAMMAR IN PIRAHÃ: A Reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues" (PDF). LingBuzz. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
Further reading
- S2CID 8941874.
- S2CID 2223235. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2007-03-25.
- Everett, Daniel L. (2003). "Documenting Endangered Languages: The View from the Brazilian Amazon" (PDF). Language Documentation and Description. 1: 140–158.
- Nevins, Andrew; Pesetsky, David; Rodrigues, Cilene (2009). "Pirahã exceptionality: A Reassessment" (PDF). Language. 85 (2): 355–404. S2CID 15798043.
- Everett, Daniel (2009). "Pirahã Culture and Grammar: a Response to some criticisms" (PDF). Language. 85 (2): 405–442. S2CID 59069607. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2009-10-24.
- Nevins, Andrew; Pesetsky, David; Rodrigues, Cilene (2009). "Evidence and Argumentation: a Reply to Everett (2009)" (PDF). Language. 85 (3): 671–681. S2CID 16915455.[full citation needed]
- Nevins, Andrew; Pesetsky, David; Rodrigues, Cilene (2007). "Pirahã Exceptionality: a Reassessment". The Buzz (LingBuzz). (2007 version of article)
- Everett, Daniel (2007). "Cultural Constraints on Grammar in PIRAHÃ: A Reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007)".
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(help) (reply to 2007 version of Nevins et al.) - Hauser, M.; Chomsky, N.; Fitch, W. T. (2002). "The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?". Science. 298 (5598): 1569–79. PMID 12446899.
- von Bredow, Rafaela (3 May 2006). "Brazil's Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Strauss, Stephen (20 August 2004). "Life without numbers". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Butterworth, Brian (21 October 2004). "What happens when you can't count past four?". Guardian'. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Biever, Celeste (19 August 2004). "Language may shape human thought". New Scientist. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Douglas, Kate (18 March 2006). "A people lost for words". New Scientist. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Davies, Elizabeth (7 May 2006). "Unlocking the secret sounds of language: Life without time or numbers". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 14, 2006. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Colapinto, John (16 April 2007). "The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2024-02-14. (a lengthy article about the Pirahã and Daniel Everett's work with them, with accompanying Slideshow Archived 2013-01-04 at archive.today. Correction appended online.)
- Bower, Bruce (4 December 2005). "The Piraha challenge: an Amazonian tribe takes grammar to a strange place". Science News. JSTOR 4017032. Retrieved 10 December 2005.
External links
- Google map of the location where Daniel Everett lived with the Pirahã[citation needed]
- A Conversation with Augusto and Yapohen Pirahã A conversation with Jose Augusto and Yapohen Pirahã, who represent the leadership of the Pirahã tribe. (Portuguese with English subtitles.)