REPOST: More on Piraha
Javi
> Stewart Gordon wrote:
>
>
>> Indeed, BTOS, Uoiauai gives a few Google hits. But no mention of either
>> to be seen in Ethnologue.
>>
>
>
> A language name does not have to be in the language. Mingo for
> instance is the name of a nearly extinct Iroquoian language
> without any labials. Pirahã has no r and no nasal vowels.
>
> Mind you, it's difficult to know what it has, because the phonemic
statement by the fellow who claims to have studied
> it since the 1970s does not make any sense, and the one
> bilingual text I managed to find does not make any sense
> either, not _any_ sense _at all_. Either Everett's informants
> have been having fun with him (and he did not realise it)
That is a quite probable explanation. The Piraha language is not
isolated, it belongs to the Mura-Piraha group, that is believed to have
descended from the northern Andes into Amazonia, and that some linguists
believe related to the Chibchan group. In Mura do Manicoré and Mura do
Autaz there are words for colors "bees" (yellow), "beehai" (red),
"biupaê" (black) and at least one word for the number two "mucui".
An now a big surprise:
the language that had no word for colors nor for numbers, now appears
to have at least one word for a color "biísi" (yellow, orange, red, note
the similarity with Mura "bees") and one word for the number two "hoí".
Fonte: EVERETT, Daniel Leonard, A Lígua Pirahã e a Teoria da Sintaxe,
UNICAMP, 1992. 400p.
http://www.geocities.com/indianlanguages_2000/chibcha_paez.htm
(Mura and Piraha are at the end of the page)
> or
> he has made it all up (and it's a poor hoax). Actually, I found
> a new URL just now, looking for "piraha"
>
> "http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001524.php"
>
> Read it. I would add:
> The absence of any correlation between the morphemes of
> that one text I managed to find ("Killing the Panther")
> and its English "translation".
You might be interested in the following link:
Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã:
Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language
TO APPEAR IN:
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
August-October 2005
(CA* main article)
Daniel L. Everett
Department of Linguistics
The University of Manchester
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/info/staff/DE/culturalgrammar.pdf
> If it smells like a hoax, feels like a hoax, looks like a hoax,sounds
like a hoax... what is it?
Maybe that Everett is slow realizing whether his informants are mocking
him or not?
--
Javi
Jacques Guy
> Jacques Guy wrote:
> > Either Everett's informants
> > have been having fun with him (and he did not realise it)
>
> That is a quite probable explanation. The Piraha language is not
> isolated, it belongs to the Mura-Piraha group, that is believed to have
> descended from the northern Andes into Amazonia, and that some linguists
> believe related to the Chibchan group. In Mura do Manicoré and Mura do
> Autaz there are words for colors "bees" (yellow), "beehai" (red),
> "biupaê" (black)
Colour words are a peculiar can of worms. With a bit of selective
approach to my data I would gleefully argue that English had no
colour words and has borrowed them from neigbouring languages
(rose, cerise, puce, fuchsia...)... with the only exception of
"yellow", but it's from "yolk" so it's not a real colour.
Imagine that the whole published English corpus consisted
of six sentences each twisted in twenty different ways, and
now try to argue my canard away.
> and at least one word for the number two "mucui".
> An now a big surprise:
>
> the language that had no word for colors nor for numbers, now appears
> to have at least one word for a color "biísi" (yellow, orange, red, note
> the similarity with Mura "bees") and one word for the number two "hoí".
And the word for "one" is "hoi" too, but in a different tone. (If I
remember correctly, /hoi/ is "one" and /hoí/ is "two"). I don't mind
that so much (there are Chinese dialects which distinguish "four" and
"ten" only by tone) but this accumulation of oddities...
> You might be interested in the following link:
> http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/info/staff/DE/culturalgrammar.pdf
I have already downloaded it, but obrigado all the same.
I have downloaded "hoi" stuff about Piraha and it does not
amount to much (I was going to write "a lot of stuff",
but "hoi stuff" suddenly sounded more accurate, especially
if I did not specify the tone.)
> Maybe that Everett is slow realizing whether his informants are mocking
> him or not?
I find it almost impossible to tell. I went through those texts
again last night, and I was struck by how little you can piece
together, how the tones seem to change randomly, and how little
Everett has figured out. The text entitled "Snakes and Dogs"
for instance. Look at this (<x> is the glottal stop):
Wordform: naosei paoxai xaoxaogá xií xaí paoxai higáísai só
pEE xaoxai xaxaagá
PrlimWfGl: I don't (no?) Dan has machine this Dan he saying
medicine/ water has
WfPOS: v n v n art n v n v
Morph:
náihi
that
mod
FT: my note: all the so's have boxes around them
The text is not even phonemicized. So you can't tell what
the tones really are (I had read that Piraha had three or
four tones, but only two constrastive tones). The
PrlimWfGl (Preliminary Wordform Glosses, I imagine)
don't match the Piraha morphemes either. Where does
that "I" come from? "I" in Piraha is /ti/ (that much
I've learnt). And look at the next sentence:
Segment 2.1.2
Wordform: só máakiri xabaxáígio xaagáhá só pEÉ kaba
PrlimWfGl: machine only has water not
WfPOS: n mod v
Morph:
FT:
Yes, nothing at all.
You know what this reminds me of? A Japanese student
we had once at ANU, who ought to be in the Guinness
Book of Records for stretching the smallest piece
of data into the longest string of publications.
The data: "Dring your dea, mister Kuki" (from
an informant on Efate island). Several years later
he was still churning out articles about it.
As for "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition"...
when you can't figure out "só máakiri xabaxáígio xaagáhá
só pEÉ kaba" after years spent studying the language,
just what business have you writing about its grammar
and its speakers' cognition? Of course you are in
a nice position doing so, because there is nothing
available but what you care to make up.