Imprensa: "Living without numbers or time"

Thu May 11 00:20:03 UTC 2006

     SPIEGEL ONLINE - May 3, 2006, 04:11 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,414291,00.html

*Brazil's Pirahã Tribe*

Living without Numbers or Time

*By Rafaela von Bredow *

*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.*

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.

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.

"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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.
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."

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.

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.

The results, published in *Science* 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."
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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