Talk:Pirahã language

message: While it's known that Pirahã has very few phonemes there some inconsistency in how many there are relative to other languages.  This article said:
* "One of the smallest phoneme inventories of any known language (perhaps surpassed only by Rotokas)"
* "claimed to have as few as ten phonemes (one fewer than Rotokas)"
I've cleaned that up to remove the absolute comparisons and inconsistency. I'm currently reading Everett's Don't Sleep, there are Snakes and adding citations to the Pirahã article to better source that one. In "Snakes" p. 179 Everett states that Pirahã, Rotokas, and Hawaiian each have eleven phonemes. Unfortunately, the Hawaiian phonology article documents 13 or 33 phonemes meaning that how you count, and perhaps who does the counting, is an issue.
Everett helps to clear up some of the contention as "Snakes" p. 178 has "Pirahã has one of the smallest sets of speech sounds or phonemes in the world..." meaning we have a reliable source that puts Pirahã among the smallest rather than making absolute larger or smaller claims relative to Rotokas, Hawaiian, or other languages.
I am concerned that 20% of this article is an unsourced dissection of various ways of measuring the phoneme inventory. While it seems valid the dissection itself feels like original research and more specifically, a synthesis. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:24, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  If it seems valid, don't challenge it. Labels like "Original Research" etc, should be applied only to honestly disputed material, not to stuff that everyone knows is ok.Likebox (talk) 17:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonemes 

message: When there is no singular plural distinction (even in pronouns), why does the language have different pronouns for it?
gi¹xai³ "you" (sing.)
gi¹xa³i¹ti³so³ "you" (pl.)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.96.2.50 (talk) 14:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK this is not a grammatical requirement, and in any case has been analyzed as more like et al. than like -s. — kwami (talk) 08:18, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plural 

message: Here's an interesting experiment we can try out: Someone who knows both a recursive language and Pirahã should try raising a child bilingually, with both languages spoken to the child as he/she develops; it may happen that this child will realize how to bridge the gap of understanding between Pirahã speakers and recursive language speakers. This may reveal something about humans that has yet to be seen. It may require individuals that know a recursive language getting residence in a place where Pirahã is spoken, so the child can get interaction from both Pirahã speakers and recursive language speakers as he/she develops.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.170.139.11 (talk) 08:20, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Possible Experiment 

message: I removed several instances of "Everett claims ___" and replaced "claims" with "states" or "says" or simply re-cast the sentence. As John Wyndham once wrote, "Do you claim to have had breakfast this morning or did you have breakfast?" I felt that his side of the controversy was minimized and not adequately explained. As someone who has no entrenched point of view in this discussion, I hope that what I have done makes the article both clearer and more fair. —Monado (talk) 03:06, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Wyndham's observations is irrelevant ... breakfast is not a claim. The issue is claims that Everett has made, not things he's eaten. "says" and "states" are synonyms of "claims". 2600:8802:5913:1700:E813:8D98:4EC7:5FB9 (talk) 13:18, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Everett "claims"... is not NPoV 

message: :In the beginning of the "Verbs" section, it is stated that Pirahá "is agglutinative, using a large number of grammatical affixes to indicate meaning." Not only is there no source for this statement but it directly contradicts those of WALS that Pirahá is zero-marking. I am going to change said statement and add the source I linked to.
自教育 (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverted. WALS indicates a high degree of synthesis, and they certainly don't say that it's the only zero-marked language in the Americas. In a more complete description, we would include that info as well, but the description needs to be factual. — kwami (talk) 02:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: WALS also says it is exclusively suffixing which would indicate agglutination.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:04, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

text: All WALS means by "zero marking" is that the direct object NP is not case-marked (which would be "dependent marking") nor is the verb marked to agree with it (which would be "head marking").  In other words, it doesn't mark the direct object at all.  This is true of Piraha, since none of its affixes are agreement markers.  Also, be very wary of WALS as a source, as it is replete with errors and contradictions.Cromulant (talk) 22:54, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  According to WALS, Pirahá is Zero-Marking

message: Why the article use three tones, as proposed by Sheldon, instead of the two proposed by Everett? Looking at it on the surface, I'd guess that the person that spent decades with these people would know more about their tone system than some Sheldon, last name unknown, who made that uncited claim in 1988, and that's the extent of the article's covering of him. Spacenut42 (talk) 22:35, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Sheldon's paper is in the bibliography section of the article, and it's available online if you can read Portuguese (which I can't, so I have no comment on the number of tones). —Mr. Granger (talk · contribs) 23:25, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tones 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Pirahã language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20081204050526/http://service.spiegel.de:80/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,414291,00.html to http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,414291,00.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 03:03, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I came here to find out how the R is pronounced in "Pirahã," but did not find anything about that letter although it is contained in the tribe's very name.
M^A^L (talk) 18:25, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "R" Sound 

message: What is the letter that represents the sound [t͡ʙ̥]? And what are some words that use this sound? OosakaNoOusama (talk) 01:09, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Letter for [t͡ʙ̥] 

message: The "idea of god" is a matterial circuitry inside the brains of some people, but the "notion of god" is not god.
The antitheist claims that we shouldn't make such erroneous connections in our brains, and the atheist simply doesn't make these erroneous axonal connections.
Being an atheist isn't a neutral state.
The atheist KNOWS that such erroneous axonal connections exist inside some people's brains.
That's why babies are religiously indifferent but not atheists.
The "notion of god" comes before atheism.
Study about the Amazonian tribe Pirahã and Daniel Everett.
The Pirahã were irreligious and religiously indifferent.
They didn't have a notion of god.
They didn't deny something they didn't know; originally they weren't atheists.
If one debated them for hours about god, he might made them atheists, but some remained religiously indifferent even after that. They simply didn't care about the idea of an omnipotent invisible person demiurge; and didn't waste brain circuitry to deny something they didn't care about.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4116:6200:562:5FE5:E593:337F (talk) 03:23, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you babbling about? This has no relevance to the article. 2600:8802:5913:1700:E813:8D98:4EC7:5FB9 (talk) 13:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "notion of nothing/nothingness" isn't the same as "nothing/nothingness", neither does constitute "nothing/nothingness" actual. The "notion of nothing/nothingness" can be imprinted physically on paper or circuitry though. 

message: While this article in the University Times at the University of Pittsburgh—which is dated 1994, not 2004, by the way—does assert that  is found in Pirahã, not only has Everett disputed it in the Reddit AMA, but if this was the case, the lack of mention of Pirahã in Ladefoged & Everett (1996) would seem too glaring an omission. I find it likely that Everett was only talking about the simple bilabial trill—which is still an uncommon sound overall—in Pirahã and the writer of the article mistook it for the affricate. Nardog (talk) 09:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bilabially trilled affricate 

message: The current article text contains:
"Pronouns are prefixed to the verb, in the order SUBJECT-INDOBJECT-OBJECT where INDOBJECT includes a preposition "to", "for", etc. They may all be omitted, e.g., hi³-ti³-gi¹xai³-bi²i³b-i³ha³i¹ "he will send you to me"."
Reading the second sentence, I expected "e.g." to be followed by an example where all three pronoun prefix positions were empty. But unless I am very mistaken in comparing the segments of the Pirahã expression with the expressions in the table, it is actually an example of an expression where all three prefix positions SUBJECT-INDOBJECT-OBJECT are all occupied. If the latter holds true, I propose the text be edited so that it no longer confuses.Redav (talk) 03:17, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguous phrasing confuses reader 

message: Both of the inventories here have k and s https://phoible.org/languages/pira1253
And the reasons of "Everett posits that [k] is an allophone of the sequence /hi/", "Women sometimes substitute /h/ for /s/", do not seems like reasons for the article to treat them as nothing but allophones. So I will remove the parentheses ONCE, I will not edit war. 97.113.186.235 (talk) 16:40, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parentheses around [k] and [s] 

message: What is the translation for the following sentence?
Does it mean "I very much want you to make arrows/an arrow"? 120.22.146.71 (talk) 01:16, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing translation