Pirahã

WALS coordinates: 7° S, 62° W

spoken in Brazil

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Mura
Routledge:
  • Pirahán
Other:
  • Mure-Pirahã
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Moderately small
Vowel Quality Inventories Small (2-4)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Moderately low
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
Uvular Consonants None
Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants No laterals
The Velar Nasal No velar nasal
Vowel Nasalization Contrast absent
Front Rounded Vowels None
Syllable Structure Simple
Tone Simple tone system
Fixed Stress Locations No fixed stress
Weight-Sensitive Stress Right-oriented: One of the last three
Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems Combined
Absence of Common Consonants No nasals
Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
Morphology
Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively concatenative
Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives No case
Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb 8-9 categories per word
Locus of Marking in the Clause No marking
Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases No marking
Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology Zero-marking
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strongly suffixing
Reduplication No productive reduplication
Case Syncretism No case marking
Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking No subject person/number marking
Nominal Categories
Number of Genders Four
Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems Sex-based
Systems of Gender Assignment Semantic
Coding of Nominal Plurality No plural
Occurrence of Nominal Plurality No nominal plural
Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Number-indifferent pronouns
Definite Articles No definite or indefinite article
Indefinite Articles No definite or indefinite article
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns No 'we'
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection No person marking
Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Two-way contrast
Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives Identical
Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Related to remote demonstratives
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns 3rd person only, but also non-singular
Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns No politeness distinction
Indefinite Pronouns Mixed
Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Differentiated
Person Marking on Adpositions No person marking
Number of Cases Exclusively borderline case-marking
Asymmetrical Case-Marking Symmetrical
Position of Case Affixes Case suffixes
Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
Numeral Classifiers Absent
Nominal Syntax
Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
Possessive Classification No possessive classification
Action Nominal Constructions Sentential
Nominal and Verbal Conjunction Identity
Verbal Categories
Perfective/Imperfective Aspect Grammatical marking
The Past Tense No past tense
The Future Tense No inflectional future
The Perfect No perfect
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
Imperative-Hortative Systems Maximal system
The Optative Inflectional optative absent
Epistemic Possibility Affixes on verbs
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality Direct and indirect
Coding of Evidentiality Verbal affix or clitic
Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect None
Verbal Number and Suppletion None
Word Order
Order of Subject, Object and Verb SOV
Order of Subject and Verb SV
Order of Object and Verb OV
Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb XOV
Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Postpositions
Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
Position of Polar Question Particles Final
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase OV and Postpositions
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun OV and NAdj
Simple Clauses
Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases Neutral
Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns Neutral
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Accusative
Verbal Person Marking Both the A and P arguments
Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking No zero realization
Order of Person Markers on the Verb A precedes P
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Double-object construction
Reciprocal Constructions No reciprocals
Passive Constructions Absent
Antipassive Constructions No antipassive
Applicative Constructions No applicative construction
Periphrastic Causative Constructions Purposive but no sequential
Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
Negative Morphemes Negative affix
Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Symmetric
Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation Non-assignable
Polar Questions Mixture of previous two types
Predicative Possession 'Have'
Comparative Constructions Conjoined
Complex Sentences
Relativization on Subjects Non-reduction
Relativization on Obliques Not possible
'Want' Complement Subjects Desiderative verbal affix
Purpose Clauses Balanced/deranked
'When' Clauses Balanced
Reason Clauses Balanced
Utterance Complement Clauses Balanced
Lexicon
Numeral Bases Restricted
Number of Non-Derived Basic Colour Categories 4
Number of Basic Colour Categories 3-4
Green and Blue Green/blue
Red and Yellow Red/yellow
M-T Pronouns No M-T pronouns
N-M Pronouns No N-M pronouns
Other
Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Other or none