Funky Feature Friday: Some Interesting things about Pirahã

Started by Taronyu, July 15, 2010, 07:30:33 AM

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Taronyu

My turn this week - I'm posting this today because I'm flying from Edinburgh to New York tomorrow, and I won't know when I'd be able to post. I figured instead of focusing on one feature, today I'm just going to highlight some stuff about Pirahã, a language spoken in the Amazon basin of Brazil by around 300 indigenous people. The researcher who knows the most about Pirahã, and is thus at the centre of many of the controversies regarding the language, published a book on the subject, which is a fascinating read if you have some time on your hands.



And, in the vein of the FFF, here's a spoken sound clip of Pirahã.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

You may notice that Pirahã transcription uses an X a lot, but you can't hear it. That's because the X stands for the glottal stop, just as the ' in Na'vi. Also, many of the vowels hávé á márk óvér thém - that's because Pirahã is a two-tone system. Tones are also prevalent in Chinese, and many more world languages, although not in any European language (not counting some Swedish.) I'm not very good at describing tone, and this post is mainly just to highlight some cool stuff about the Pirahã in case you want to know more, so let's move on to other cool stuffs. And luckily, the Wikipedia page is very comprehensive. So, here's some more cool stuff that Pirahã has:

  • One of the smallest phoneme inventories of any known language and a correspondingly high degree of allophonic variation, including two very rare sounds, [ɺ͡ɺ̼] and [t͡ʙ̥]. The phoneme inventory is the amount of sounds a language has: so, for instance, b, d, and x are not Na'vi sounds. Pirahã has only three vowels, i a and o, and seven consonants. The second of the rare sounds mentioned occurs sometimes, as well, and is, interestingly enough, a voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate. In order to make this sound, make a [t], and try and make a motorboat sound at the same time (without voicing it, as [d] is only a voiced version of [t].) It's quite an odd sound, and Everett thinks he only learned about it recently because the Pirahã learned not to use it, to avoid being made fun of.

  • An extremely limited clause structure, not allowing for nested recursive sentences like "Mary said that John thought that Henry was fired". This means that there is pretty much no futa in their language, or use of any modals or a driven relative clauses, as in Na'vi.

  • No abstract color words other than terms for light and dark (though this is disputed in commentaries by Paul Kay and others on Everett (2005)).

  • No numbers. They have words for less, and for more, but the Pirahã have no conceptualisation of one, two, three, and so on. They also don't mark plurals for nouns or pronouns. That's pretty cool. And it resulted in this funny joke on Language Log.

  • Pirahã can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music. In fact, Keren Everett believes that current research on the language misses much of its meaning by paying little attention to the language's prosody, its musical aspect. Consonants and vowels may be omitted altogether and the meaning conveyed solely through variations in pitch, stress, and rhythm. She says that mothers teach their children the language through constantly singing the same musical patterns.

And there you are. There are some more interesting things, but I think I'll just leave it at that for now. Comments?


'Oma Tirea

Quote from: Taronyu on July 15, 2010, 07:30:33 AM
You may notice that Pirahã transcription uses an X a lot, but you can't hear it. That's because the X stands for the glottal stop, just as the ' in Na'vi. Also, many of the vowels hávé á márk óvér thém - that's because Pirahã is a two-tone system....

Maybe that would explain the px tx an kx being transcribed with an X in Na'vi instead of p', t' and k' HRH ;D

[img]http://swokaikran.skxawng.lu/sigbar/nwotd.php?p=2b[/img]

ÌTXTSTXRR!!

Srake serar le'Ìnglìsìa lì'fyayä aylì'ut?  Nari si älofoniru rutxe!!

kewnya txamew'itan

Pirahã pseudo-numerals are very interesting along witht he fact that its pronouns are possibly borrowed implying (presumably) that an earlier incarnation of Pirahã might have had no pronouns at all. :o
Internet Acronyms Nìna'vi

hamletä tìralpuseng lena'vi sngolä'eiyi. tìkangkem si awngahu ro
http://bit.ly/53GnAB
The translation of Hamlet into Na'vi has started! Join with us at http://bit.ly/53GnAB

txo nga new oehu pivlltxe nìna'vi, nga oer 'eylan si mì fayspuk (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)
If you want to speak na'vi to me, friend me on facebook (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)

numena'viyä hapxì amezamkivohinve
learnnavi's

Nyx

Quote from: Taronyu on July 15, 2010, 07:30:33 AM
Pirahã can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music. In fact, Keren Everett believes that current research on the language misses much of its meaning by paying little attention to the language's prosody, its musical aspect. Consonants and vowels may be omitted altogether and the meaning conveyed solely through variations in pitch, stress, and rhythm. She says that mothers teach their children the language through constantly singing the same musical patterns.

This is really interesting. It reminded me of how a friend and I sometimes hum things to each other and pretend to understand just to annoy others. And it's really neat to see that there's a language which does this for real ^^ But maybe it's not so weird after all, I mean, you can hum "I don't know" and most people will get it.

kewnya txamew'itan

On the subject of whistling language, I just tried it a bit with a selection of English. I reckon that it would be possible to whistle English losing only fricatives, variations in vowel rounding and air stream for stops. That would leave (I think) enough of the word left for someone listening carefully with a fair bit of practice listening for it to understand. That said, the complex syllable structure really wouldn't make it easy.

On a slightly related note, I've been tempted to include whistles in one of the conlangs I'm working on to be treated as a vowel, does anyone know if this sort of thing (that is, whistles being used in the ordinary spoken form of the language) occurs in any natural languages.
Internet Acronyms Nìna'vi

hamletä tìralpuseng lena'vi sngolä'eiyi. tìkangkem si awngahu ro
http://bit.ly/53GnAB
The translation of Hamlet into Na'vi has started! Join with us at http://bit.ly/53GnAB

txo nga new oehu pivlltxe nìna'vi, nga oer 'eylan si mì fayspuk (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)
If you want to speak na'vi to me, friend me on facebook (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)

numena'viyä hapxì amezamkivohinve
learnnavi's

wm.annis

Quote from: kemeoauniaea on July 16, 2010, 04:47:20 PMOn a slightly related note, I've been tempted to include whistles in one of the conlangs I'm working on to be treated as a vowel, does anyone know if this sort of thing (that is, whistles being used in the ordinary spoken form of the language) occurs in any natural languages.

Almost: Shona.

kewnya txamew'itan

Those whistled sibilants are hard for me to get my head around. I can't seem to whistle any obstruent at all and the only reason stops work in whistling for me is that they temporarily stop the whistle. Anyway, I got a plausible verdict which is good enough, I'll add them in (one of the main reasons I ask is that it annoys me that there is no mirrored abjad type of script where vowels are given prominence and consonants aren't required and only rarely written so this conlang has a wide variety of vowels but only a very few consonants so that it can fit such a script).
Internet Acronyms Nìna'vi

hamletä tìralpuseng lena'vi sngolä'eiyi. tìkangkem si awngahu ro
http://bit.ly/53GnAB
The translation of Hamlet into Na'vi has started! Join with us at http://bit.ly/53GnAB

txo nga new oehu pivlltxe nìna'vi, nga oer 'eylan si mì fayspuk (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)
If you want to speak na'vi to me, friend me on facebook (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)

numena'viyä hapxì amezamkivohinve
learnnavi's

Nyx

Quote from: kemeoauniaea on July 16, 2010, 05:01:35 PM
(one of the main reasons I ask is that it annoys me that there is no mirrored abjad type of script where vowels are given prominence and consonants aren't required and only rarely written so this conlang has a wide variety of vowels but only a very few consonants so that it can fit such a script).
Cool, like reversing the vowels and consonants. Do you have any examples of words? And how many vowels do you have?

Plumps

Interesting.
He's saying ›Okay‹ (transcribed as Xigíai) a lot, if I hear him correctly. A loan word?

Taronyu

Not a loan. Certainly ubiquitous, though. There's a bit about it in the book.

kewnya txamew'itan

Quote from: Nyx on July 16, 2010, 06:16:33 PM
Quote from: kemeoauniaea on July 16, 2010, 05:01:35 PM
(one of the main reasons I ask is that it annoys me that there is no mirrored abjad type of script where vowels are given prominence and consonants aren't required and only rarely written so this conlang has a wide variety of vowels but only a very few consonants so that it can fit such a script).
Cool, like reversing the vowels and consonants. Do you have any examples of words? And how many vowels do you have?

No sample words yet, I had a total of 22 vowels (including 7 syllabic consonants) before we include whistles. I'll probably include 4 whistles, a whistled i, U (tense na'vi u), & (the o in not for Americans) and a giving me 26. I also have 3 tones, high, low and rising so there are total of 75 different possible syllable nuclei for only 2 non-syllabic consonants so it's a little absurd really, but it has to be for it to be able to fit its script.
Internet Acronyms Nìna'vi

hamletä tìralpuseng lena'vi sngolä'eiyi. tìkangkem si awngahu ro
http://bit.ly/53GnAB
The translation of Hamlet into Na'vi has started! Join with us at http://bit.ly/53GnAB

txo nga new oehu pivlltxe nìna'vi, nga oer 'eylan si mì fayspuk (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)
If you want to speak na'vi to me, friend me on facebook (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)

numena'viyä hapxì amezamkivohinve
learnnavi's

Nyx

Quote from: kemeoauniaea on July 17, 2010, 03:23:42 AM
Quote from: Nyx on July 16, 2010, 06:16:33 PM
Quote from: kemeoauniaea on July 16, 2010, 05:01:35 PM
(one of the main reasons I ask is that it annoys me that there is no mirrored abjad type of script where vowels are given prominence and consonants aren't required and only rarely written so this conlang has a wide variety of vowels but only a very few consonants so that it can fit such a script).
Cool, like reversing the vowels and consonants. Do you have any examples of words? And how many vowels do you have?

No sample words yet, I had a total of 22 vowels (including 7 syllabic consonants) before we include whistles. I'll probably include 4 whistles, a whistled i, U (tense na'vi u), & (the o in not for Americans) and a giving me 26. I also have 3 tones, high, low and rising so there are total of 75 different possible syllable nuclei for only 2 non-syllabic consonants so it's a little absurd really, but it has to be for it to be able to fit its script.
Wow, that is a lot, haha. But hey, absurdity can turn into awesomeness ^^

Txur’Itan

I was talking to a Vietnamese friend recently about this language, the tonal complexity has him intrigued enough to start reading about this.  For a long time, there was a common misconception among lay-poly-glots I know personally, that there was not any native languages with such tonal complexity in the Americas.
私は太った男だ。


Taronyu

Quote from: Txur'Itan on July 18, 2010, 03:16:43 PM
I was talking to a Vietnamese friend recently about this language, the tonal complexity has him intrigued enough to start reading about this.  For a long time, there was a common misconception among lay-poly-glots I know personally, that there was not any native languages with such tonal complexity in the Americas.

There's actually a ton of tonal languages in America. That's ridiculous.

Txur’Itan

Quote from: Taronyu on July 18, 2010, 03:33:21 PM
Quote from: Txur'Itan on July 18, 2010, 03:16:43 PM
I was talking to a Vietnamese friend recently about this language, the tonal complexity has him intrigued enough to start reading about this.  For a long time, there was a common misconception among lay-poly-glots I know personally, that there was not any native languages with such tonal complexity in the Americas.

There's actually a ton of tonal languages in America. That's ridiculous.

Thus the difference between awareness and facts... =/
私は太った男だ。


Kayrìlien

This is really cool! I've never heard of this language before, and it looks and sounds rather interesting. The man being interviewed looks like he's enjoying himself too, like...why are these people filming me speak?

Love these Linguistics Fridays; they're a really cool feature. Do either of you know anything about the Georgian language? If so, that might be a cool topic to look at in detail. (Reading Wikipedia articles just isn't the same thing.)

You guys are doing a great job bringing out my curiosity about languages! Irayo nìtxan!

Kayrìlien