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35-501: The Central dialect of Rotokas possesses one of the world's smallest phoneme inventories. (Only the Pirahã language has been claimed to have fewer.) The alphabet consists of twelve letters, representing eleven phonemes . Rotokas has a vowel length distinction (that is, all vowels have a short and long counterpart), but otherwise lacks distinctive suprasegmental features such as contrastive tone or stress. The consonant inventory embraces

70-497: A time–manner–place ordering of adpositional phrases . In linguistic typology, one can usefully distinguish two types of SOV languages in terms of their type of marking: In practice, of course, the distinction between these two types is far from sharp. Many SOV languages are substantially double-marking and tend to exhibit properties intermediate between the two idealised types above. Many languages that have shifted to SVO word order from earlier SOV retain (at least to an extent)

105-579: A belt bought has.") A rare example of SOV word order in English is "I (subject) thee (object) wed (verb)" in the wedding vow "With this ring, I thee wed." SOV languages have a strong tendency to use postpositions rather than prepositions , to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb, to place genitive noun phrases before the possessed noun, to place a name before a title or honorific ("James Uncle" and "Johnson Doctor" rather than "Uncle James" and "Doctor Johnson") and to have subordinators appear at

140-528: A consequence, observations involving concepts like the notion of quantity (which has a singular treatment in Pirahã language) became impossible, because of the influence of the new knowledge on the results. There is also a claim that Pirahã lacks any unique color terminology , being one of the few cultures (mostly in the Amazon basin and New Guinea) that only have specific words for 'light' and 'dark' if that claim

175-1079: A few loan words, mainly from Portuguese . Pirahã kóópo ("cup") is from the Portuguese word copo , and bikagogia ("business") comes from Portuguese mercadoria ("merchandise"). Everett (2005) says that the Pirahã culture has the simplest known kinship system of any human culture. A single word, baíxi (pronounced [màíʔì] ), is used for both 'mother' and 'father' (like English "parent" although Pirahã has no gendered alternative), and they appear not to keep track of relationships any more distant than biological siblings . According to Everett in 1986, Pirahã has words for 'one' ( hói ) and 'two' ( hoí ), distinguished only by tone. In his 2005 analysis, however, Everett said that Pirahã has no words for numerals at all, and that hói and hoí actually mean "small quantity" and "larger quantity". Frank et al. (2008) describes two experiments on four Pirahã speakers that were designed to test these two hypotheses. In one, ten spools of thread were placed on

210-415: A paca there" Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%93verb In linguistic typology , a subject–object–verb ( SOV ) language is one in which the subject , object , and verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam ate oranges" which is subject–verb–object (SVO). The term

245-717: A phenomenon is odd cross-linguistically, Ian Maddieson has found in researching Pirahã data that /k/ does indeed exhibit an unusual distribution in the language. The "ten phoneme" claim also does not consider the tones of Pirahã, at least two of which are phonemic (marked by an acute accent and either unmarked or marked by a grave accent in Daniel Everett ), bringing the number of phonemes to at least twelve. Sheldon (1988) claims three tones, high (¹), mid (²) and low (³). When languages have inventories as small and allophonic variation as great as in Pirahã and Rotokas, different linguists may have very different ideas as to

280-417: A preposition "to", "for", etc. They may all be omitted, e.g., hi -ti -gi xai -bi i b-i ha i "he will send you to me". For possession, a pronoun is used in apposition ( zero-marking ): paitá Paita hi he xitóhoi testicles paitá hi xitóhoi Paita he testicles "Paita's testicles" ti I kaiíi house ti kaiíi I house "my house" Thomason & Everett (2001) note

315-403: A table one at a time and the Pirahã were asked how many were there. All four speakers answered in accordance with the hypothesis that the language has words for 'one' and 'two' in this experiment, uniformly using hói for one spool, hoí for two spools, and a mixture of the second word and 'many' for more than two spools. The second experiment, however, started with ten spools of thread on

350-561: Is a more recent innovation. There does not seem to be any reason for positing phonological manners of articulation (e.g., plosive, fricative, nasal, tap) in Central Rotokas. Rather, a simple binary distinction of voice is sufficient. Since a phonemic analysis is primarily concerned with distinctions, not with phonetic details, the symbols for voiced occlusives could be used: stop ⟨ b, d, ɡ ⟩ for Central Rotokas, and nasal ⟨ m, n, ŋ ⟩ for Aita dialect. (In

385-605: Is a three-way distinction required between voiced, voiceless, and nasal consonants. Hence, this dialect has nine consonant phonemes versus six for Rotokas Proper (though no minimal pairs were found between /g/ and /ŋ/ ). The voiced and nasal consonants in Aita are collapsed in Central Rotokas, i.e., it is possible to predict the Central Rotokas form from the Aita Rotokas form, but not vice versa. For example, bokia ' day ' has /b ~ β/ in both Central and Aita Rotokas, but

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420-741: Is complicated by long vowels, and not all verbal conjugations follow this pattern. Typologically, Rotokas is a fairly typical verb-final language, with adjectives and demonstrative pronouns preceding the nouns they modify, and postpositions following. Although adverbs are fairly free in their ordering, they tend to precede the verb, as in the following example: osirei-toarei eye- MASC . DU avuka-va old- FEM . SG iava POST ururupa-vira closed- ADV tou-pa-si-veira be- PROG - 2 . DU . MASC - HAB osirei-toarei avuka-va iava ururupa-vira tou-pa-si-veira eye-MASC.DU old-FEM.SG POST closed-ADV be-PROG-2.DU.MASC-HAB The old woman's eyes are shut. The alphabet

455-407: Is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers. It is not in immediate danger of extinction, as its use is vigorous and the Pirahã community is mostly monolingual. The Pirahã language is most notable as the subject of various controversial claims; for example, that it provides evidence against linguistic relativity . The controversy is compounded by the sheer difficulty of learning the language;

490-465: Is in SVO word order. Non-finite verbs are placed at the end, however, since V2 only applies to the finite verb: " Ich will etwas über Karl sagen " ("I want to say something about Karl"). In a subordinate clause , the finite verb is not affected by V2, and also appears at the end of the sentence, resulting in full SOV order: " Ich sage, dass Karl einen Gürtel gekauft hat. " (Word-for-word: "I say that Karl

525-527: Is often loosely used for ergative languages like Adyghe and Basque that really have agents instead of subjects. Among natural languages with a word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by subject–verb–object ; the two types account for more than 87% of natural languages with a preferred order). Languages that have SOV structure include Standard Chinese is generally SVO but common constructions with verbal complements require SOV or OSV. Some Romance languages are SVO, but when

560-755: Is perhaps the smallest in use, with only 12 letters of ISO basic Latin alphabet without any diacritics and ligatures . The letters are A E G I K O P R S T U V . T and S both represent the phoneme /t/ , written with S before an I and in the name 'Rotokas', and with T elsewhere. The V is sometimes written B . A simpler alphabet has been proposed, using only A E I O U Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū P T K B D G , (16 letters) using macrons for long vowels and arguably simpler spelling rules. However, it has never been put into common use. Selected basic vocabulary items in Rotokas: Pirah%C3%A3 language Pirahã (also spelled Pirahá, Pirahán ), or Múra-Pirahã ,

595-668: Is the indigenous language of the Pirahã people of Amazonas, Brazil . The Pirahã live along the Maici River , a tributary of the Amazon River . Pirahã is the only surviving dialect of the Mura language ; all others having died out in the last few centuries as most groups of the Mura people have shifted to Portuguese . Due to this, Pirahã can be considered its own language now, as no other Mura dialects have survived. Suspected relatives, such as Matanawi , are also extinct . Pirahã

630-769: Is true. Although the Pirahã glossary in Daniel Everett's Ph.D. thesis includes a list of color words (p. 354), Everett (2006) now says that the items listed in this glossary are not in fact words but descriptive phrases (such as "(like) blood" for "red"). The basic Pirahã personal pronouns are: These can be serially combined: ti gíxai or ti hi to mean "we" ( inclusive and exclusive ), and gíxai hi to mean "you (plural)", or combined with xogiáagaó 'all', as in "we (all) go". There are several other pronouns reported, such as 'she', 'it' (animal), 'it' (aquatic animal), and 'it' (inanimate), but these may actually be nouns, and they cannot be used independently

665-422: The Aita dialect before /i/ . Firchow & Firchow had reported the same for Central Rotokas, though Robinson contests it is not the case anymore due to widespread bilingualism with Tok Pisin . The voiced consonants are the allophonic sets [β, b, m] , [ɾ, n, l, d] , and [ɡ, ɣ, ŋ] . It is unusual for languages to lack phonemes whose primary allophone is a nasal . Firchow & Firchow (1969) have this to say on

700-538: The Tupian pronouns were borrowed, and hi differs only in dropping the a . Pirahã is agglutinative , using a large number of affixes to communicate grammatical meaning. Even the 'to be' verbs of existence or equivalence are suffixes in Pirahã. For instance, the Pirahã sentence "there is a paca there" uses just two words; the copula is a suffix on "paca": káixihíxao-xaagá paca-exists gáihí there káixihíxao-xaagá gáihí paca-exists there "There's

735-406: The end of subordinate clauses. They have a weaker but significant tendency to place demonstrative adjectives before the nouns they modify. Relative clauses preceding the nouns to which they refer usually signals SOV word order, but the reverse does not hold: SOV languages feature prenominal and postnominal relative clauses roughly equally. SOV languages also seem to exhibit a tendency towards using

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770-510: The following places of articulation: bilabial , alveolar , and velar , each with a voiced and an unvoiced consonant. The three voiced members of the Central Rotokas dialect consonant phoneme inventory each have wide allophonic variation. Therefore, it is difficult to find a choice of IPA symbols to represent them which is not misleading. The voiceless consonants are straightforward voiceless stop consonants : /p, t, k/ [p, t, k] . Robinson (2006) reports that t has an allophone [ts]~[s] in

805-400: The lack of nasal phonemes in the Central Rotokas dialect (which they call Rotokas Proper ): "In Rotokas Proper [...] nasals are rarely heard except when a native speaker is trying to imitate a foreigner’s attempt to speak Rotokas. In this case the nasals are used in the mimicry whether they were pronounced by the foreign speaker or not." Robinson shows that in the Aita dialect of Rotokas there

840-507: The nature of their phonological systems. The segmental phonemes are: The number of phonemes is at most thirteen, matching Hawaiian , if [k] is counted as a phoneme and there are just two tones; if [k] is not phonemic, there are twelve phonemes, one more than the number found in Rotokas, or eleven among women who uniformly replace /s/ with /h/. ( English , by comparison, has thirty to forty-five , depending on dialect .) However, many of

875-659: The number of linguists with field experience in Pirahã is very small. Speakers refer to their language as Apáitisí , and to their own ethnic group as Hiáitihí . The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically simplest languages known, comparable to Rotokas ( New Guinea ) and the Lakes Plain languages such as Obokuitai . There is a claim that Pirahã has as few as ten phonemes , one fewer than Rotokas, or even as few as nine for women, but this requires analyzing [k] as an underlying /hi/ and having /h/ invariably substituted for /s/ in female speech. Although such

910-520: The object is an enclitic pronoun, word order allows for SOV (see the examples below). German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar . They can be considered SOV but with V2 word order as an overriding rule for the finite verb in main clauses , which results in SVO in some cases and SOV in others. For example, in German, a basic sentence such as " Ich sage etwas über Karl " ("I say something about Karl")

945-409: The phonemes show a great deal of allophonic variation. For instance, vowels are nasalized after the glottal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ (written h and x ). Also, Because of its variation, Everett states that /k/ is not a stable phoneme. By analyzing it as /hi/ , he is able to theoretically reduce the number of consonants to seven (or six for women with constant /h/-substitution). Pirahã has

980-480: The pronouns are formally close to those of the Tupian languages Nheengatu and Tenharim , which the Mura had once used as contact languages: Both the Tupian and Pirahã third-person pronouns can be used as demonstratives, as in Pirahã hi xobaaxai ti "I am really smart" ( lit. "This one sees well: me"). Given the restricted set of Pirahã phonemes, the Pirahã pronouns ti and gi are what one would expect if

1015-669: The properties: for example, the Finnish language (high usage of postpositions etc.) The Ethio-Semitic , Cushitic and Omotic languages generally exhibit SOV order. ተስፋዬ Täsəfayē Tesfaye Subject በሩን bärun the door Object ዘጋው zägaw closed Verb ተስፋዬ በሩን ዘጋው Täsəfayē bärun zägaw Tesfaye {the door} closed Subject Object Verb Tesfaye closed the door. Ayyantu Ayantu Subject buna coffee Object dhugti drinks Verb Ayyantu buna dhugti Ayantu coffee drinks Subject Object Verb Ayantu drinks coffee. Somali generally uses

1050-452: The proposed alphabet for Central Rotokas, these are written ⟨v, r, g⟩ . However, ⟨b, d, g⟩ would work equally well.) In the chart below, the most frequent allophones are used to represent the phonemes. Vowels may be long (written doubled) or short. It is uncertain whether these represent ten phonemes or five; that is, whether 'long' vowels are distinct speech sounds or mere sequences of two vowels that happen to be

1085-413: The same. The Aita dialect appears not to distinguish length in vowels at all. Other vowel sequences are extremely common, as in the word upiapiepaiveira . It does not appear that stress is phonemic, but this is not certain. Words with 2 or 3 syllables are stressed on the initial syllable; those with 4 are stressed on the first and third; and those with 5 or more on the antepenultimate (third-last). This

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1120-439: The second person plural pronoun in Central Rotokas starts with /b ~ β/ , /bisi/ , but with /m/ in its Aita cognate. Furthermore, Aita was found to have minimal pairs for the voiced labial and alveolar consonants: /buta/ ' time ' vs. /muta/ ' taste ' . This suggests that the consonant inventory of the ancestor language of Aita and Central Rotokas was more like Aita, and that the small phoneme inventory of Central Rotokas

1155-414: The table, and spools were subtracted one at a time. In this experiment, one speaker used hói (the word previously supposed to mean 'one') when there were six spools left, and all four speakers used that word consistently when there were as many as three spools left. Though Frank and his colleagues do not attempt to explain their subjects' difference in behavior in these two experiments, they conclude that

1190-473: The two words under investigation "are much more likely to be relative or comparative terms like 'few' or 'fewer' than absolute terms like 'one'". There is no grammatical distinction between singular and plural , even in pronouns. A 2012 documentary aired on the Smithsonian Channel reported that a school had been opened for the Pirahã community where they learn Portuguese and mathematics. As

1225-432: The way the three basic pronouns can. The fact that different linguists come up with different lists of such pronouns suggests that they are not basic to the grammar. In two recent papers, Everett cites Sheldon as agreeing with his (Everett's) analysis of the pronouns. Sheldon (1988) gives the following list of pronouns: Pronouns are prefixed to the verb, in the order SUBJECT-INDOBJECT-OBJECT where INDOBJECT includes

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