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<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1"><b>Brazil's Pirahã Tribe</b><br> <br><font size="+3">Living without
Numbers or Time</font><br><br><i>By Rafaela von Bredow </i></font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1"><b>The
Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses.
That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of
the most hotly debated by linguists.</b> </font></font></p>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">During one of his first visits to Brazil's Pirahãs, members of the tribe
wanted to kill Daniel Everett. At that point, he wasn't even a "bagiai" (friend)
yet and a travelling salesman -- who felt Everett had conned him -- had promised
the natives a lot of whiskey for the murder. In the gloom of midnight, the
Pirahã warriors huddled along the banks of the Maici and planned their
attack.</font></font></div>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">What the
tribesmen didn't realize, however, was that Everett, a linguist, was
eavesdropping, and he could already understand enough of the Amazon people's
cacophonic singsong to make out the decisive words.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">"I locked
my wife and our three children in the reasonably safe shed of our hut and
immediately went to the men," Everett recalls. "In one move, I snatched up all
of their bows and arrows, went back to the hut and locked them up." He had not
only disarmed the Pirahãs -- he had also startled them -- and they let him live.
The next day, the family left without any trouble.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">But the
language of the forest dwellers, which Everett describes as "tremendously
difficult to learn," so fascinated the researcher and his wife that they soon
returned. Since 1977, the British ethnologist at the University of Manchester
spent a total of seven years living with the Pirahãs -- and he's committed his
career to researching their puzzling language. Indeed, he was long so uncertain
about what he was actually hearing while living among the Pirahãs that he waited
nearly three decades before publishing his findings. "I simply didn't trust
myself."</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Everett
sensed his findings would be controversial. Indeed they were: What he found was
enough to topple even the most-respected theories about the Pirahãs' faculty of
speech.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">The
reaction came exactly as the researcher had expected. The small hunting and
gathering tribe, with a population of only 310 to 350, has become the center of
a raging debate between linguists, anthropologists and cognitive researchers.
Even Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Steven Pinker
of Harvard University, two of the most influential theorists on the subject, are
still arguing over what it means for the study of human language that the
Pirahãs don't use subordinate clauses.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Indeed,
the debate over the people of the Maici River goes straight to the core of the
riddle of how homo sapiens managed to develop vocal communication. Although bees
dance, birds sing and humpback whales even sing with syntax, human language is
unique. If for no other reason than for the fact that it enables humans to piece
together never before constructed thoughts with ceaseless creativity -- think of
Shakespeare and his plays or Einstein and his theory of relativity.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Linguistics generally focuses on what idioms across the world have in
common. But the Pirahã language -- and this is what makes it so significant --
departs from what were long thought to be essential features of all
languages.</font></font></p>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">The
language is incredibly spare. The Pirahã use only three pronouns. They hardly
use any words associated with time and past tense verb conjugations don't exist.
Apparently colors aren't very important to the Pirahãs, either -- they don't
describe any of them in their language. But of all the curiosities, the one that
bugs linguists the most is that Pirahã is likely the only language in the world
that doesn't use subordinate clauses. Instead of saying, "When I have finished
eating, I would like to speak with you," the Pirahãs say, "I finish eating, I
speak with you."</font></font></div>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Equally
perplexing: In their everyday lives, the Pirahãs appear to have no need for
numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never once heard words like
"all," "every," and "more" from the Pirahãs. There is one word, "hói," which
does come close to the numeral 1. But it can also mean "small" or describe a
relatively small amount -- like two small fish as opposed to one big fish, for
example. And they don't even appear to count without language, on their fingers
for example, in order to determine how many pieces of meat they have to grill
for the villagers, how many days of meat they have left from the anteaters
they've hunted or how much they demand from Brazilian traders for their six
baskets of Brazil nuts.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">The debate
amongst linguists about the absence of all numbers in the Pirahã language broke
out after Peter Gordon, a psycholinguist at New York's Columbia University,
visited the Pirahãs and tested their mathematical abilities. For example, they
were asked to repeat patterns created with between one and 10 small
batteries. Or they were to remember whether Gordon had placed three or eight
nuts in a can.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">The
results, published in <i>Science</i> magazine, were astonishing. The Pirahãs
simply don't get the concept of numbers. His study, Gordon says, shows that "a
people without terms for numbers doesn't develop the ability to determine exact
numbers."</font></font></p>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">His
findings have brought new life to a controversial theory by linguist Benjamin
Whorf, who died in 1914. Under Whorf's theory, people are only capable of
constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words. In other words:
Because they have no words for numbers, they can't even begin to understand the
concept of numbers and arithmetic.</font></font></div>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">But then,
coming to terms with something like Portuguese multiplication tables would
require the forest-dwellers to acquire some basic arithmetic. The Warlpiri -- a
group of Australian aborigines whose language, like that of the Pirahã, only has
a "one-two-many," system of counting -- had no difficulties counting farther
than three in English.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">But the
Pirahãs proved to be completely different. Years ago, Everett attempted to teach
them to learn to count. Over a period of eight months, he tried in vain to teach
them the Portuguese numbers used by the Brazilians -- um, dois, tres. "In the
end, not a single person could count to ten," the researcher says.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">It's
certainly not that the jungle people are too dumb. "Their thinking isn't any
slower than the average college freshman," Everett says. Besides, the Pirahãs
don't exactly live in genetic isolation -- they also mix with people from the
surrounding populations. In that sense, their intellectual capacities must be
equal to those of their neighbors.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Eventually
Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the
Pirahã idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He
explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now."
The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is
being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the
presence," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for
abstract thought or complicated connections to the past -- limiting the language
accordingly.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Living in
the now also fits with the fact that the Pirahã don't appear to have a creation
myth explaining existence. When asked, they simply reply: "Everything is the
same, things always are." The mothers also don't tell their children fairy tales
-- actually nobody tells any kind of stories. No one paints and there is no
art.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Even the
names the villagers give to their children aren't particularly imaginative.
Often they are named after other members of the tribe which whom they share
similar traits. Whatever isn't important in the present is quickly forgotten by
the Pirahã. "Very few can remember the names of all four grandparents," says
Everett.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">The
scientist is convinced that linguists will find a similar cultural influence on
language elsewhere if they look for it. But up till now many defend the widely
accepted theories from Chomsky, according to which all human languages have a
universal grammar that form a sort of basic rules enabling children to put
meaning and syntax to a combination of words.</font></font></p>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Whether
phonetics, semantics or morphology -- what exactly makes up this universal
grammar is controversial. At its core, however, is the concept of recursion,
which is defined as replication of a structure within its single parts. Without
it, there wouldn't be any mathematics, computers, philosophy or symphonies.
Humans basically wouldn't be able to view separate thoughts as subordinate parts
of a complex idea.</font></font></div>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">And there
wouldn't be subordinate clauses. They are responsible for translating the
concept of recursion into grammar. Renowned US psychologist Pinker believes that
if the Piraha don't form subordinate clauses, then recursion cannot explain the
uniqueness of human language -- just as it cannot be a central element of some
universal grammar. Chomsky would be refuted.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">The
logical way forward now would be to try to prove that the Pirahã can actually
think in a recursive fashion. According to Everett, the only reason this isn't
part of their language is because it is forbidden by their culture. The only
problem is nobody can confirm or deny Everett's observations since no one can
speak Pirahã as well as he does.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">Despite
this, several researchers -- including two Chomsky colleagues -- will travel
this year to Maici to try and check parts of his claims. But for some, it's
already getting too crowded in the jungle. "I'm concerned the Pirahã will simply
become one more scientific oddity, to be exploited and analyzed right down to
their feces," complains Peter Gordon.</font></font></p><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif" size="-1">
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