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Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã

  • Emily Sadlier-Brown EMAIL logo , Raiane Salles and Isabel Salomon
Published/Copyright: September 5, 2022
Linguistics Vanguard
From the journal Linguistics Vanguard Volume 8 Issue s5

Abstract

We present a preliminary quantitative analysis of (s) variation in Pirahã. Previous research noted a gender difference in (s) use in which women use [h] in environments where men use [s]. Using word list data, we analyze (s) rates among three men and three women. Our results indicate that women do utilize [h] more than men, but neither use one variant categorically. Furthermore, (s) is more phonetically variable, and varies in more environments, than previously described. We argue that (s) is undergoing lenition from [s] to [h], and that this change is led by women. This suggests the “female lead” found in many sound change studies is not restricted to the West. The pattern is even more striking because social and cultural factors operate very differently in the Pirahã context. We evaluate whether current explanations for the female lead in sound change are applicable in Pirahã.

Keywords: genderlect; lenition; Pirahã; sociolinguistics; sound change
Corresponding author: Emily Sadlier-Brown, Linguistics, The University of British Columbia Faculty of Arts, Vancouver, BC, Canada, E-mail:

Funding source: Bolsas no Brasil – Pós-doutorado [Scholarships in Brazil – Post-doctorate] (São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP))

Award Identifier / Grant number: 2013/11693-7

Funding source: UBC Language Sciences Initiative Seed Funding

Award Identifier / Grant number: F18-05878/PG 12R01096

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Pirahã people in the village of Piquiá for receiving Dr. Glauber da Silva and Raiane Salles for data collection, as well as José Diahoi and the Association of the Pirahã Indigenous People of Amazonas (APIHAM) for organizing the field trip, and especially the six Pirahã participants for sharing their language with us; FAPESP for Glauber’s portion of the funding and Dr. Cilene Rodrigues (PUC-Rio) for funding Raiane’s portion, as well as the UBC Language Sciences Initiative Seed Funding for the project Sound Change in Pirahã (F18-05878/PG 12R01096, PI Dr. Lisa Matthewson); the Museum of the Indian, FUNAI (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) for loaning the recording equipment and the UBC Latin American Languages Lab and the UBC Language and Learning Lab for their input. Finally, we are grateful to the coeditors of this special issue as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

  1. Research funding: This work was supported by the Bolsas no Brasil – Pós-doutorado [Scholarships in Brazil – Post-doctorate] (São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)) [grant number 2013/11693-7] and UBC Language Sciences Initiative Seed Funding [grant number F18-05878/PG 12R01096].

  2. Ethical considerations: This paper is part of the project “Sound Change in Pirahã”, approved by the Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia, and considered of minimal risk. The data used in this paper were collected under Glauber R. da Silva’s postdoctoral research project “A Expressão da Recursividade em Pirahã: Documentação, Descrição e Análise (Mura) [The expression of recursion in Pirahã: documentation, description and analysis (Mura)]”, approved by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (2013/11693-7, PI Dr. Filomena Sandalo, The University of Campinas). Informed oral consent was obtained, as is common practice in work with non-literate participants. The privacy rights of the human participants are observed.

Appendix A
Table 8:

[h] use in young men (data from Salles 2014, 2017).

Word Speaker’s gender and age
[maohai] ‘cloth’ M12; M20
[maha] ‘apple’ M12
[hojo?áagaha] ‘sewing thread’ M12
[hapioa] ‘hat’ M20
[gaihai] ‘say’ M18, M19, M20
[pioaihai] ‘soda’ M18
[ahoahai] ‘blue’ M20
[miíhai] ‘red’ M20; M21
[hoihi] ‘son’ M20
Appendix B
Table 9:

Pirahã-Mura probable cognates for variable (s) words. Pirahã data are given in phonological notation with (s) represented as /s/; Mura data are orthographic representations (Mura data from Hanke [1950]).

Pirahã Gloss Mura Gloss
/ísoí/ ‘comb’ i ssúi ‘comb’
/ísaɁáihí/ ‘catfish’ esohuábi ‘to fish’
/máosái/ ‘clothes’ b ásai ‘clothes’
/isáaitói/ ‘chin’ i sái ‘chin’
/ísigíhi/ ‘meat’ isirihuí ‘meat’
/píisi/ ‘cotton’ i píssi ‘cotton’
/kósí/ ‘eye’ k osí ‘eye’
/hisí/ ‘sun’ h uisí ‘sun’

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Received: 2021-08-05
Accepted: 2021-08-19
Published Online: 2022-09-05

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Introduction to sound change in endangered or small speech communities
  4. Where have all the sound changes gone? Phonological stability and mechanisms of sound change
  5. Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
  6. Cross-dialectal synchronic variation of a diachronic conditioned merger in Tlingit
  7. Vowel harmony in Laz Turkish: a case study in language contact and language change
  8. The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora
  9. Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals
  10. Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels
  11. Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang
  12. The emergence of bunched vowels from retroflex approximants in endangered Dardic languages
  13. The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy
  14. Speech style variation in an endangered language
  15. Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
  16. The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension
  17. Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic
  18. Phonetic transfer in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
  19. The evolution of flap-nasalization in Hoocąk
  20. Sound change and tonogenesis in Sylheti
  21. Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
  22. Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German
  23. Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0109
Keywords for this article
genderlect; lenition; Pirahã; sociolinguistics; sound change

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Introduction to sound change in endangered or small speech communities
  4. Where have all the sound changes gone? Phonological stability and mechanisms of sound change
  5. Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
  6. Cross-dialectal synchronic variation of a diachronic conditioned merger in Tlingit
  7. Vowel harmony in Laz Turkish: a case study in language contact and language change
  8. The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora
  9. Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals
  10. Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels
  11. Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang
  12. The emergence of bunched vowels from retroflex approximants in endangered Dardic languages
  13. The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy
  14. Speech style variation in an endangered language
  15. Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
  16. The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension
  17. Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic
  18. Phonetic transfer in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
  19. The evolution of flap-nasalization in Hoocąk
  20. Sound change and tonogenesis in Sylheti
  21. Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
  22. Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German
  23. Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
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