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The '''Pirahã people''' (pronounced {{IPA-xx|piɾaˈhã|}}) are an [[indigenous people|indigenous]] [[hunter-gatherer]] tribe of [[Amazon Rainforest|Amazon]] [[Indigenous peoples|native]]s, a subgroup of the [[Mura people|Mura]], who mainly live on the banks of the [[Maici River]] in [[Brazil]]'s [[Amazonas (Brazilian state)|Amazonas state]], in the territory on  [[Humaitá, Amazonas|Humaitá]] and [[Manicoré]] municipality. 
{{As of|2010}}, they number 420 individuals. The Pirahã people do not call themselves ''Pirahã'' but instead the '''Hi'aiti'ihi''', roughly translated as "the straight ones".<ref name="Pullum">{{cite web | url = http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001387.html | title = The Straight Ones: Dan Everett on the Pirahã | last = Pullum | first = Geoffrey K. | author = Geoffrey Pullum | publisher = Language Log | date = 26 August 2004 | accessdate = 2007-06-22 }}</ref>

Their culture and language have a number of unusual features, and are sometimes described as "primitive". <ref>[http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/anthropology-and-history/news-primitive-language-primitive-people Environmental Graffiti]</ref> However, anthropological linguist [[Daniel Everett]] points out, "The Pirahã are supremely gifted in all the ways necessary to insure 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."<ref name="Colapinto"/>

The Pirahã speak the [[Pirahã language]]. They call any other language “Crooked head.”<ref name="Colapinto"/> Members of the Pirahã can [[whistled language|whistle their language]], which is how the tribe's men communicate when hunting in the jungle.

== Culture ==
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. Pirahãs 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).<ref>Everett 2008, pp. 86-87</ref>

Daniel Everett states that one of the strongest Pirahã values is no coercion; you simply don't tell other people what to do.<ref name="Edge"/> There appears to be no [[social hierarchy]]; the Pirahã have no formal leaders. Their social system can thus be labeled as [[primitive communism]], in common with many other hunter-gatherer bands in the world, although rare in the Amazon because of a history of agriculture before Western contact (see [[History of South America#Amazon|history of the Amazon]]). 

Their culture is remarkably conservative. For example, they use canoes every day for fishing and for crossing the river that they live beside. However, when their canoes wear out, they simply 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. But when they needed another canoe, they said that "Pirahã do not make canoes" and told Everett that he should buy them a canoe.<ref name="Edge"/>

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.<ref name="Colapinto"/> They take naps of 15 minutes to, at the most, two hours throughout the day and night, and [[Segmented sleep|rarely sleep through the night]].<ref>Everett 2008 pp. xvii, 13, 70, 79</ref>

They often go hungry, not for want of food, but from a desire to be ''tigisái'' (hard).<ref>Everett 2008, p. 76</ref> They do not store food in any quantity, but generally eat it when they get it.<ref name="Colapinto"/> Pirahã have ignored lessons in preserving meats by salting or smoking.<ref name="Colapinto"/> They cultivate manioc plants that grow from spit-out seeds and make only a few days' worth of manioc flour at a time.<ref name="Colapinto"/> They trade Brazil nuts and sex for consumables or tools, e.g. machetes, gunpowder, powdered milk, sugar, whiskey. Chastity is not a cultural value.<ref name="Edge"/> They trade Brazil nuts, wood, and ''[[sorva]]'' (rubbery sap used in chewing gum) for soda-can pull-tabs, which are used for necklaces.<ref name="Colapinto"/>  Men wear T-shirts and shorts that they get from traders; women sew their own plain cotton dresses.<ref name="Colapinto"/> This implies that they also trade for sewing-needles.

Their decoration is mostly necklaces, used primarily to [[Apotropaism|ward off spirits]].<ref>Everett 2008, p. 74</ref> The concept of drawing is alien to them and when asked to draw a person, animal, tree, or river, the result is simple lines.<ref name="PG-SOM">Gordon, Peter. [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2004/10/15/1094492.DC1/Gordon.SOM.pdf Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia, Supporting Online Materials], p. 5. Science, 2004.</ref> However, on seeing a novelty such as airplane, a child may make a model of it, which may be soon discarded.<ref>John Colapinto (2007), ''[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto?currentPage=all The Interpreter]''. New Yorker, 2007-04-16</ref>

The Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god<ref>Everett, Daniel. [http://fora.tv/2009/03/20/Daniel_Everett_Endangered_Languages_and_Lost_Knowledge#fullprogram "Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge"], ''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.</ref> and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence for every claim made. They aren't interested in things if they don't know the history behind them, if they haven't seen it done.<ref name="Edge"/> However, they do believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment. These spirits can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things including people.<ref>Everett 2008, pp. 112, 134-142</ref> Everett reported one incident where the Pirahã said that “''Xigagaí'', one of the beings that lives above the clouds, was standing on a beach yelling at us, telling us that he would kill us if we go into the jungle.” Everett and his daughter could see nothing and yet the Pirahã insisted that ''Xigagaí'' was still on the beach.<ref>Everett 2008, pp. xvi-xvii</ref>

== Language ==

{{Main|Pirahã language }}

Anthropological linguist [[Daniel Everett]], who wrote the first Pirahã grammar, claims that there are related pairs of curiosities in their language and culture.<ref name="Colapinto">{{cite news | url = http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto?currentPage=all | title = The Interpreter—Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language? | last = Colapinto | first = John | authorlink = John Colapinto | work = [[The New Yorker]] | date = 16 April 2007 | accessdate = 2009-02-25 }}</ref>

After working with the language for thirty 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.<ref name="Edge">[http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/everett07/everett07_index.html Recursion and Human Thought: Why the Pirahã Don't Have Numbers]</ref> If the language lacks grammatical recursion, then it is a counterexample to the theory proposed by Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch (2002) that recursion is a feature which all human languages must have.

Pirahã shares with [[Rotokas language|Rotokas]] ([[New Guinea]]) and [[Hawaiian language|Hawaiian]] the distinction of having the fewest [[phoneme]]s of any of the world's languages. When spoken by women, Pirahã has one less consonant, meaning it has the fewest of any of the world's languages.<ref>Everett 2008 pp. 178-179. Everett states that Pirahã, Rotokas, and Hawaiian each have eleven phonemes. However, the [[Hawaiian phonology]] has either 13 or 33 phonemes and it's not known what source or method Everett used when counting the Hawaiian phonemes.{{citation needed|date=January 2011}}</ref>

Their language is a unique living language. (It's related to [[Muran languages|Mura]], which is no longer spoken.) John Colapinto explains, "Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations."<ref name="Colapinto"/> Peter Gordon writes that the language has a very complex verb structure: "To the verb stem are appended up to 15 potential slots for morphological markers that encode aspectual notions such as whether events were witnessed, whether the speaker is certain of its occurrence, whether it is desired, whether it was proximal or distal, and so on. None of the markers encode features such as person, number, tense or gender."<ref name="PG-SOM"/> 

Curiously, although not unprecedentedly,<ref>{{cite web|last=Pullum |first=Geoffrey K. |url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001387.html |title=Language Log: The Straight Ones: Dan Everett on the Pirahã |publisher=Itre.cis.upenn.edu |date=2004-08-26 |accessdate=2010-07-02}}</ref> the language has no cardinal or ordinal numbers. Some researchers, such as Prof. Peter Gordon of Columbia University, claim that the Pirahã are incapable of learning [[numeracy]].  His colleague, Prof. 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."<ref name="Edge" />

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 unique words for color. There are no unanalyzable root words for color; the recorded color words recorded are all compounds like ''mi³i¹sai''<ref name="Edge"/> or ''bi³i¹sai'', "blood-like", which is not that uncommon.{{citation needed|date=July 2010}}

It is suspected that the language's entire [[pronoun]] set, which is the simplest of any known language, was recently borrowed from one of the [[Tupí–Guaraní languages]], and that before that the language may have had no pronouns whatsoever.  Many linguists, however, find this claim questionable due to lack of evidence. However, if there had been pronouns at an earlier stage of Pirahã, this would not affect Everett's claim of the  significance of the system's simplicity today. There are few Tupi–Guarani loanwords in areas of the lexicon more susceptible to borrowing (such as nouns referring to cultural items, for instance). There are some loanwords for different types of flora and fauna (which may indicate that the Pirahã came from elsewhere). That all Pirahã pronouns were borrowed is a hypothesis and would be unusual, but there are precedents.{{citation needed|date=January 2011}}

== See also ==

* [[Indigenous people of Brazil]]
* [[Sapir–Whorf hypothesis]]

== Notes ==

{{reflist}}

== References ==
* Everett, Daniel L. (2008) ''Don't Sleep, there are Snakes'', [[Pantheon Books]] ISBN 978-0-375-42502-8

== Further reading ==

<div class="references-small">
* {{cite journal | first = Peter | last = Gordon | authorlink = Peter Gordon (psychology professor) | year = 2004 | title = Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from Amazonia | journal = Science | volume = 306 | issue = 5695 | pages = 496–9 | doi = 10.1126/science.1094492 | pmid = 15319490 }}
* {{cite journal | first = Daniel | last = Everett | authorlink = Daniel Everett | year = 2005 | title = Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language | journal = Current Anthropology | volume = 46 | issue = 4 | pages = 621–46 | url = http://www.pnglanguages.org/americas/brasil/PUBLCNS/ANTHRO/PHGrCult.pdf |format=PDF| doi = 10.1086/431525 }}
* {{cite journal | first = Andrew | last = Nevins | coauthors = David Pesetsky & Cilene Rodrigues | year = 2009 | title = Pirahã exceptionality: A Reassessment | journal = Language | volume = 85 | issue = 2 | pages = 355–404 | url = http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Enevins/npr09.pdf | doi = 10.1353/lan.0.0107}}
* {{cite journal | first = Daniel | last = Everett | year = 2009 | title = Pirahã Culture and Grammar: a Response to some criticisms | journal = Language | volume = 85 | issue = 2 | pages = 405–442 | url = http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/docs/Reply%20in%20Language%202009.pdf | doi = 10.1353/lan.0.0104}}
* {{cite journal | first = Andrew | last = Nevins | coauthors = David Pesetsky & Cilene Rodrigues | year = 2009 | title = Evidence and Argumentation: a Reply to Everett (2009) | journal = Language | volume = 85 | issue = 3 | pages = 671–681 | url = http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~nevins/npr09b.pdf | doi = 10.1353/lan.0.0140}}
*  [http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000411 Nevins, Andrew Ira, David Pesetsky, Cilene Rodrigues, "Pirahã Exceptionality: a Reassessment"] (2007 version of 2009 article)
* [http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000427 Everett, Daniel "Cultural Constraints on Grammar in PIRAHÃ: A Reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007)"] (reply to 2007 version of Nevins et al. article)
* {{cite journal | last = Hauser | first = M. | coauthors = Chomsky, N. & Fitch, W. T. | year = 2002 | title = The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? | journal = Science | issue =   5598| pages = 1569–79 | doi = 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 | volume = 298 | pmid = 12446899 }}
* {{cite news|title=Brazil's Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time|author=Rafaela von Bredow|publisher=[[Spiegel Online]]|date=May 3, 2006|url=http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,414291,00.html}}
* [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040820/NUMBERS20/TPScience/ Article appearing in "The Globe and Mail"]
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,,1331672,00.html ''Guardian'' article: What happens when you can't count past four?]
* [http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6303 Language may shape human thought] New Scientist article (19 August 2004)
* [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925431.500.html A people lost for words]  New Scientist article (18 March 2006)
* [http://www.jcrows.com/withoutnumbers.html Life without numbers]
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article362380.ece The Independent article (7 May 2006)]
* ''[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto The Interpreter]'' in the ''New Yorker'' (16 April 2007); a lengthy article about the Pirahã and Daniel Everett's work with them
** [http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/04/16/slideshow_070416_piraha Slideshow] accompanying the article (16 April 2007)]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_24_168/ai_n16029317 The Piraha challenge: an Amazonian tribe takes grammar to a strange place] Science News, December 10, 2005
* [http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/everett07/everett07_index.html Recursion and Human Thought: Why the Piraha don't have numbers]
</div>

== External links ==
* [http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/SubjectAreas/LinguisticsEnglishLanguage/Staff/Daniel%20Everett/thefile,74768,en.pdf ''Documenting Endangered Languages: The View from the Brazilian Amazon''] PDF print of Everett (2006). <!-- this links is broken -->
* [http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=-7.360700,+-62.271883&sll=33.894339,-117.981641&sspn=0.016885,0.033045&ie=UTF8&geocode=FUSvj_8ddc5J_A&split=0&ll=-7.360679,-62.271881&spn=0.040348,0.06609&t=p&z=15&iwloc=A Google map of the location where Daniel Everett lived with the Pirahã]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piraha People}}
[[Category:Indigenous peoples in Brazil]]

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