| Also Known As: Piraha language,Múra-Pirahã
Description:
Pirahã (also spelled Pirahá, Pirahán; Portuguese: Pirarrã; Pirahã language: xapaitíiso) is a language spoken by the Pirahã — an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, who live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon.
Pirahã is believed to be the only surviving member of the Mura language family, all other members having become extinct in the last few centuries. It is therefore a language isolate, without any known connection to other living languages. It is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers. It is not thought to be in 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 such as providing evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Daniel Everett, over the course of more than two dozen papers and one book about the language, ascribed various surprising features to the language, including:
Everett has claimed that some of these features disprove the basic assumptions of modern Chomskian linguistics. However, this claim is contested by many linguists, on the grounds that some of the features Everett mentions either do not actually occur in..... full article at Wikipedia |
