Pirahã – in need of recursive syntax?

i
Jeanette Sakel and Eugenie Stapert
University of the West of England; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Leipzig
[email protected], [email protected]

1. Introduction
Since the publication of the article ‘The faculty of language: what is it, who
has it and how did it evolve?’ by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) recursion
has assumed a prominent place in the discussion of what aspects of our
communication system are unique to humans and human language. The
hypothesis put forward in that article is that recursion is the only property
unique to human language. The entailments of this hypothesis are that
recursion would be found in all languages spoken by humans and that a human
language that does not use recursive structures would not exist.
This claim has provoked a number of reactions, most noticeably
Everett (2005), who argues that Pirahã, the last surviving member of the
Muran language family, does not exhibit recursive structures in its syntax,
even though it undoubtedly is a language spoken by humans. Pirahã is spoken
by approximately 450 people in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, in small
settlesments along the river Maici. The Pirahã live a largely traditional life as
hunter-gatherers and rarely seek contact with the outside world.
Since the publication of Everett’s (2005) article, there has been an
ongoing, mainly web-based, discussion as to whether Pirahã exhibits recursive
structures, e.g., on LingBuzz by Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007) and a
reply by Everett (2007a), on Language Log by Liberman (2006), Everett
(2007b), Sakel’s (2007a) and Slobin’s (2007) Letters to the editor of the
journal Human Development and Everett’s reply (2008). The issues brought
up are far from being resolved. Some of the ambiguity in the present
discussion is based on contradictory analyses of Pirahã data in two
publications by Everett (1986, 2005). Everett’s earlier work (1986) contains an
extensive description of embedded clauses in Pirahã, whereas he rejects the
existence of these structures in his more recent work (2005). Due to this
discrepancy, researchers who support the hypothesis that Pirahã has recursive
syntax usually cite data presented by Everett (1986), discarding the new
analysis (2005). While the discussion is very focussed, few people so far have
looked at Pirahã language facts other than those given in the two publications
by Everett (1986, 2005), comparing them to other indicators as to whether
recursion is necessary in a human language.
The present article sets out to add new data to the discussion. It is
based on our field research among the Pirahã and brings together research data
from experiments and elicitation, as well as analysis of spontaneous speech.ii
We look at first-hand language data in three areas of Pirahã grammar which
we would expect to be expressed by recursive structures if these existed, and
then address our findings in the light of a number of recent findings in
linguistics.
The article is divided up in the following way: first we will discuss the
suffix -sai, which Everett (1986) reported to be an indicator of embedding, and
which features prominently in the recent discussions. We will then look at the
other side of the coin and investigate what alternative strategies can be used to
express complex situations. Following this, we will address the question
whether recursive structures could enter the language through language
contact with Portuguese. Finally we will examine our results in the light of
recent publications to gain insights into whether recursion is really a necessary
notion in human language. This article is a collection of several arguments
related to the question whether recursion is necessary in Pirahã.

2. The suffix -sai

The suffix -sai figures prominently in recent discussions of recursion. Everett
(1986: 277) classified it as a nominaliser and an obligatory indicator of
embedding in conditional clauses (1986: 264). In his later approach (2005:
21), however, he argues that -sai does not mark syntactic subordination.iii We
have studied this marker’s functions, in particular with respect to whether it is
an obligatory marker of embedding. We will here look at two very different
constructions in which -sai is used.
The first part of our discussion is based on findings by Stapert (2007)
and Stapert et al. (in preparation). They tested the functions of -sai
experimentally in a sentence repetition task.
In this experiment, two clauses representing semantically connected
propositions, such as it is raining and I don’t go to the forest were combined.
The suffix -sai was added to either the verb of the first or that of the second
clause, cf. (1a) and (1b) and the informants were asked to merely repeat the
sentence.

(1) a. Piiboi-bai-sai ti kahápi-hiaba.

rain-INTENS-SAI 1 go-NEG
‘If it is raining I won’t go.’
b. Piiboi-bai ti kahápi-hiabi-sai.
rain-INTERS 1 go-NEG-SAI
‘If it is raining I won’t go.’

A total of nine speakers of Pirahã – 7 women and 2 men – participated in this

language task. In their response, informants attached -sai to the first clause, the
second clause, both clauses, or neither of the clauses (cf. 2) independent of the
input and with no reported change in meaning or judgement of
(un)grammaticality.

(2) Piiboi-bai ti kahápi-hiaba.

Rain-INTENS 1 go-NEG
‘If it is raining I won’t go.’

Out of a total of 39 relevant responses -sai was attached to both clauses in 9

cases, to none in 6, and to one clause – either the rain part or the forest part –
in 24 instancesiv.
The alternative in which -sai does not occur in either clause (2) was
not part of the input of the experiment. Hence a simple repetition of an
ungrammatical sentence from the input is ruled out. This means that the
concept can be expressed without the presence of -sai; thus this marker can not
be an obligatory marker of embedding. Still unclear, however, is the exact
function of -sai in these constructions, but it does not appear to be a marker of
subordination, as originally claimed by Everett (1986).v
A related investigation carried out by Sakel and Stapert for the present
paper was the analysis of various other constructions with -sai, both in
spontaneous speech and elicitation. The results show that -sai occurs most
frequently in constructions expressing quotation of the type hi gai-sai (3 say
-sai) ‘he said’ or ti gai-sai (1 say-sai) ‘I said’. This construction is always
followed by direct speech and occurs with great frequency, and indeed in
certain discourse contexts in every utterance. While functioning as a quotative
in many of these cases, it sometimes appears in contexts that are not directly
reportative, cf. (3).

(3) Ai hi gai-sai xigihí hi xaisigíaihí xaitáhoíhí

well 3 say-SAI man 3 same sleep
xoó.
forest
‘Well, the same man went to sleep in the forest.’

This example (3) was uttered in the context of elicitation – the story was
played out with dolls – where no conversation was directly referred to. Rather
than being a quotative, hi gaisai seems to express impersonal reference in this
case, such as ‘the Pirahã in general do/say this’, detaching the speaker and his
responsibility from what is said. The meaning would be ‘one would say it in
the following way’. This could point to a possible development away from the
mere quotative use of the construction towards a more abstract meaning.
Altogether, we can say that hi gaisai and similar constructions
function as discourse markers and elements detached from the main content of
the clause. Similar claims have been made for constructions in many other
languages, including English, cf. Thompson and Mulac (1991) and Thompson
(2002) for arguments that I think and I guess have grammaticalised into
evidential markers and Hopper (2000) for English pseudo-clefts functioning as
discourse markers.

3. Alternative strategies to express complex cognitive structures: Mental

verb constructions
Similar to -sai above, Pirahã employs various other strategies to express
cognitively complex concepts without making use of syntactic complexity. A
striking example is mental verb constructions, such as sentences containing I
think or I doubt in English. These are relevant since they always reflect two
perspectives: either from two different people, or between reality and personal
experience of one person. Regardless of whether these are two separate
propositions or not, which in itself is a much debated issue, we have to do with
a cognitively complex situation and many languages choose to encode this in
syntactically complex sentences. Still, non-complex ways of coding mental
verb constructions are likewise well-attested, e.g., marking for evidentiality by
suffixes.
When looking at the data in Pirahã, we find that there are no separate
verbs expressing mental states. Rather, suffixes corresponding functionally to
English mental verbs or adverbs indicating mental attitudes are used. Table 1
brings together some of the mental attitude suffixes and their functions, as well
as their equivalent translations as complex structures or adverbs in English (for
a detailed argument on why mental verb constructions and evidential suffixes
are comparable cf. Diessel and Tomasello 2001; Stapert 2009).

Table 1: attitude suffixes in Pirahã

Verbal suffix Function, meaning Equivalent in English
Mental verb Adverb
-áti Uncertainty I doubt, I’m not sure maybe, perhaps
-haí relative certainty I think, I guess probably
-há complete certainty I know, I bet, I’m definitely, certainly
sure
-sog Desiderative I wish, I want, I hope hopefully
-híai Hearsay I heard apparently, allegedly
-sibiga deductive I understand, I apparently,
suspect I get the seemingly
impression
-xáagahá observation, matter I notice, I see, I’m clearly
of fact certain (lit. use)
-bai / -koí emphasis, intensifier I bet, I mean obviously, certainly,
(clarification) for sure
Example (4) shows the markers -haí ‘relative uncertainty’ and -híai ‘hearsay’
added to the verb bog-ai ‘he came’ to express ‘doubt’ and ‘hearsay’
respectively. In examples (5) and (6) the meanings of ‘complete certainty’ and
‘observation’ are added in the same way:

(4) Garippíiru bog-ai-haí-híai.

Brazilian.worker come-ATELIC-DOUBT-HEARSAY
‘(I heard that) the Brazilian worker has probably not come here.’
(5) Hi kagáihiai koabái-p-á-há
3 jaguar kill-PERF-REM-COMP_CERT
‘(I’m sure) he shot the jaguar’
(6) Piboi-bai hi kahápi-hiab-áagahá
Rain-EMPH 3 go-NEG-OBSERV
‘It is raining; (I see) he is not going (to the forest)’

In English the concept of uncertainty can be expressed by the adverb probably,

as in the translation of (4), or the entire sentence could alternatively be
expressed in a double embedded structure such as ‘someone said that he
doubts that the Brazilian worker came here.’ These elements function like
evidentials, rather than verbs in expressing probability and source of
information without having a separate subject themselves. In this way
recursive embeddings in English are very different from constructions with
evidentials in Pirahã. Compare the recursive sentence in (7a) with the non-
recursive equivalent using adverbs with similar functions to the Pirahã
evidentials in (7b):

(7) a. He said that I suspected that the students were hung over.
b. Hearsay perhaps the students are hung over.

Summarising, markers of attitude in Pirahã can be analysed as expressing

semantically complex structures without syntactic embedding.

4. Language contact
The examples we have looked at so far were native Pirahã language data.
Now, we will turn to elements and morphemes outside of the Pirahã system
that could be introduced by language contact and that could subsequently
introduce recursion into Pirahã syntax. The hypothesis is that through
intensive language contact with Portuguese, markers and structures of
embedding, which are common in Portuguese, could be borrowed into Pirahã.
Our reasoning for this is as follows:
 Firstly, elements that mark structures of embedding are frequently
borrowed in other contact situations. A typological study of grammatical
contact phenomena (Matras and Sakel 2007; Sakel 2007b) concludes that
function words such as discourse markers, coordinators and subordinating
conjunctions are almost always borrowed in situations where a minority
language is in contact with a highly dominant language and with prevailing
bilingualism. Indeed, in most of these cases subordinating conjunctions were
among the borrowed elements, being taken over wholesale with their form and
function.
Secondly, the Pirahã use many Portuguese lexical elements in their
language, even though the community as a whole is predominantly
monolingual with only a few older men having rudimentary knowledge of
Portuguese. This is surprising as the Pirahã have been in contact with outsiders
for over 200 years. The loanwords from Portuguese include new concepts such
as gahiáo ‘plane’ (from Portuguese avião) and kapíiga ‘paper’ (from
Portuguese papel), as well as a number of elements that already exist in
Pirahã, but that are frequently used when speaking with outsiders, such as bíi
‘good’ (from Portuguese bem) or ambora ‘away, let’s go’ (from Portuguese
embora). When looking at the syntactic structures, however, there is no
evidence that Portuguese has had any influence on the grammar of Pirahã, as
there are no apparent grammatical calques. In a number of cases speakers of
Pirahã incorporate Portuguese grammatical elements into their language, but
this is only the case when making conscious efforts to speak Portuguese to
foreigners, as in (8).

(8) Ai ai aki his-o keeche

DM DM here sun-LOCvi hot
kwaado aki his-o friio
when here sun-LOC cold
ai kaba keema ai
DM NEG burn DM
ai muito braako.
DM very white
‘It is hot here in the sun. When it is cold here in the sun, you do not
burn. (You are) very white.’ (Portuguese elements in bold)

In (8) the speaker makes use of the Portuguese adverbial clause marker cuando
‘when’ (integrated into Pirahã as kwaado). Instead of functioning as an
adverbial clause marker, however, it appears to be used similar to the Pirahã
distance marker -so, which expresses that an event is not happening in the
immediate context of the utterance.vii In this case, the speaker expresses that it
is not cold at the moment of speech. Comparing this example to typical Pirahã
sentences, the structure is very similar: relations between clauses are
established by simple juxtaposition, combined with distance marking when
appropriate. Example (8) is thus an instance of insertion of Portuguese
material into a grammatical frame that is purely Pirahã. This is suggestive of
the fact that Pirahã has not borrowed recursive structures from Portuguese.
Increased contact with the outside world in recent years, and hence increased
bilingualism could change this, however.

5. Recursion in Pirahã? Toward an alternative analysis

Let us sum up our findings and discuss to what degree we can expect recursion
in Pirahã. Firstly, does Pirahã have recursion? Most structures we have looked
at so far have given no evidence of being outright syntactically recursive
structures. In most cases clauses are linked by simple juxtaposition and
relations between them become clear in the discourse context. However,
conclusive support of this negative finding would require more evidence than
we presently possess. Thus, our conclusions are necessarily tentative.
There are a number of markers, such as -sai and -so, that seem to
appear in structures parallel to ‘recursive’ structures in other languages, but
these are not outright markers of subordination or recursion in the syntactic
sense: more often, these markers are expressing semantic cohesion between
parts of the discourse. These markers also indicate relations between what is
said and the reality of the speech situation, such as the distance marker -so,
which expresses a distance to the current reality. Concepts that are expressed
recursively in many other languages are marked by affixes in Pirahã, as in the
case of mental verb construction. Language contact has likewise failed so far
to introduce recursive structures from Portuguese. Hence, we can not say with
any confidence that there is – or for that matter is not – recursion in Pirahã.
Instead of saying that recursion is a core characteristic of human
syntax, we believe that it is an important feature of human language which is
most likely to be present in languages and language varieties that are used to
express complex concepts. Let us discuss a number of recent publications in
the field to clarify what we mean.

5.1. Spoken language

Recursive structures appear to be far less frequent in spoken language than in
written language. Mark Liberman discusses this for English in his entry on
Language Log in May 2006, citing the following example from Elmore
Leonard’s La Brava:

(9) What’re you having, conch? You ever see it they take it out of the
shell? You wouldn’t eat it.
This is a typical example of a variant of spoken language, though
paradoxically in this case it is written language imitating spoken language.
Nonetheless, it shows that complex and recursive constructions such as ‘if you
had ever seen it being taken out of the shell you would not eat it’ can be
replaced by paratactic, non-recursive structures in spoken language.
That spoken language makes less use of recursion has also been
shown for Finnish and Japanese: Laury and Ono (This Volume) present
evidence that when recursive structures appear in spoken language they are
generally less complicated than in written language. There is often only one
degree of recursion in spoken language, while written language can show
many different layers of subordination (cf. also Karlsson 2007). Similar
evidence comes from the analysis of informal talk, where clause chains are
preferred to embedding (Pawley and Syder 1983).
Comparing these findings with our Pirahã data, we can argue that
since Pirahã is a spoken language exclusively, recursion may be unnecessary
or at least far rarer than in written language.

5.2. that-omission in relative clauses

On top of the decrease in recursive structures we find in spoken language we
can also argue for a parallel case that extends to written language. Two recent
approaches to that-omission in English restrictive relative clauses claim that
the resulting construction is non-recursive. Fox and Thompson (2007: 293)
argue that pragmatic-prosodic factors, as well as frequency, can lead to a
“monoclausal” nature of the combination of relative clause and main clause.
These monoclausal combinations are highly formulaic and processed as one,
rather than two clauses, and in these cases that is omitted. In a different
approach, Jaeger and Wasow (2007) argue that the more accessible the
relativised element is in English non-subject extracted relative clauses, the
more likely it is for the relativiser to be omitted. That-omission usually takes
place when the relativised element is given or definite. Hence that is often
absent when the content of what is said is predictable. Another parallel case
has been reported by Progovac (This Volume), who argues that certain small
clauses do not allow for recursion.
In this way, English has constructions that have a non-recursive
expression and that appear both in spoken and written language. What if such
constructions were the default or indeed the only option in another language,
such as Pirahã? Since English relative clauses work equally well in cases with
or without overt syntactic marking for recursion, it is possible to imagine a
human language that does not need to have recursive structures.

5.3. Esoteric language use

More evidence comes from studies of how human language developed. Wray
and Grace (2007) distinguish between esoteric vs. exoteric communication,
based on Thurston’s (1987) terminology. Esoteric communication is inward-
facing, which means that it is used within a well-defined group. In this type of
communication comprehension is facilitated as hearers are likely to know what
the speaker is going to say in a given situation. This still means that the
language can express novel ideas, but the expression of predictable thoughts is
a default. Exoteric communication, on the other hand, is outward-facing.
Hence, exoteric communication in the definition of Wray and Grace (2007)
would range from using a lingua franca to employing one’s local dialect to
communicate with somebody unknown. Speakers have to be clear, since
hearers are unlikely to predict what the speaker will talk about. This is possible
in a language with simple, unambiguous elements that can be combined by
unambiguous rules.
Hence it is not surprising that the type of linguistic features found in
varieties used for esoteric and exoteric communication are very different:
Wray and Grace (2007) discuss how in esoteric communication suppletion and
complex semantic structures are frequent, while language varieties used for
exoteric communication often show logical and transparent rules that are also
learnable by adult speakers and that are semantically transparent. They argue
that human language probably started as a means for esoteric communication
and that rule-based grammar is a cultural add-on that evolved with increased
necessity for complex negotiations. Many types of communication are exoteric
in the complex and globalised world of today. This is most likely to one reason
for recursion being very frequent in the world’s languages. The Pirahã, on the
other hand, are an inward-facing group, and their language is only rarely used
with outsiders.viii Explicit recursive syntax may thus not be necessary.

6. Conclusion
In conclusion, the Pirahã structures we have looked at in this paper have
shown no evidence of being syntactically recursive. Instead, Pirahã appears to
make use of juxtaposition and morphological complexity to express complex
concepts. Our conclusion is hence very similar to Everett’s analysis (2005).
We have discussed a number of constructions in which even syntactically
complex languages prefer non-recursive structures to recursive ones. It is
possible that what other languages have as an option is the default in Pirahã.
Further support comes from the fact that Pirahã is an exclusively oral
language. Spoken language and predictable content are exactly the instances in
which non-recursive structures are preferred in other languages such as
English. Hence, there is no apparent functional need for recursion in Pirahã
syntax.
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Abbreviations
1 first person
3 third person
ATELIC atelic action/event
COMP_CERT complete certainty
DM discourse marker
DOUBT expression of doubt
EMPH emphasis
HEARSAY hearsay evidential
INTENS intensifier
LOC locative
NEG negation
OBSERV observation
PERF perfect
REM remote
SAI -sai marker

i
We would like to thank Dan Everett, Nigel Vincent, David Denison, Ted Gibson,
Mike Frank, Manfred Krifka, Uli Sauerland, Harry van der Hulst and three anonymous
reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article. We would also like to thank
Alison Wray for an inspiring discussion on formulaic language and esoteric
communication. This article is based on a presentation at the conference on ‘Recursion
in Human Language’ in Normal, Illinois (April 2007).
ii
Our field research was funded by the CHLaSC project (within the EU F6
programme). The fieldwork was facilitated by Dan Everett, who accompanied us to
the field, though the research data presented here are entirely our own and based on
our own interpretations. Some of the experiments were carried out with Dan Everett as
the interpreter, while others were conducted monolingually without his involvement.
These settings did not result in any noticeable differences in our language data. We
took great care to carry out all experiments as scientifically and objectively as
possible.
iii
Everett, p.c., argues that -sai is an old information marker.
iv
For a detailed description and analysis of the results of this task see Stapert (2007).
v
In the same way as English that, -sai is optional and can be left out. While one could
argue that when that is left out in English it is still present in the form of a null
complementiser. In Pirahã the argument against -sai as a subordination marker is
considerably stronger because of the combination of -sai being optional and appearing
in different positions within the clause.
vi
Hiso is Pirahã for ‘in the sun’ or ‘on the day’, but it is phonologically similar to local
Portuguese constructions with fazer ‘to be (in relation to weather). It may hence be a
blend of both languages, accommodated by a similar construction in Pirahã.
vii
We do not yet fully understand the exact functions of -so or its distribution. In the
same was as -sai, however, it appears to be optional and is not an obligatory marker
for embedding.
viii
These outsiders are a handful of linguists and missionaries who speak the language
to a degree.