Language name and locationː Pirahã, Amazon state, Brazil [Refer to Ethnologue]

语言名称和分布地区: 皮拉哈语, 巴西西北部亚马逊州地区麦西河流域

1. hói  *  distinguished only by tone

.  hoí  **  distinguished only by tone

.  baáɡiso  ***

Linguist providing data and dateː Prof. Daniel Everett, Department of Linguistics, Illinois State University, Normal, USA, June 12, 2008.

提供资料的语言学 家: Prof. Daniel Everett, 2008 年 6 月 12 日.

Other comments: Pirahã is the indigenous language of the isolated Pirahã of Amazonas, Brazil. The Pirahã live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon River. There are approximately 390 ethnic population. There are no the concept of numbers or numerals in the Pirahã language. The word hói was universally used to describe one object, hoí  was used to describe two or more objects, and baáɡiso was used to refer to quantities of three or more. These data were consistent with meanings of ''one'', ''roughly two'' and ''many''. However, in the decreasing elicitation, hói was used to refer to quantities as large as six, hoí was used for quantities between four and ten, and baáɡiso was used for quantities between seven and ten. None of the three words that Pirahã produced were used consistently to refer to any particular quantity across the two tasks. Because each of the three words was used a dramatically different range of values in the ascending thank the descending elicitations, they are much more likely to be relative or comparative terms like ''few'' than absolute terms like ''one''.

Below is taken from Wikipedia about Pirahã language. According to Everett in 1986, Pirahã has words for 'one' (hói) and 'two' (hoí), distinguished only by tone. In his 2005 analysis, however, Everett claimed 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 batteries were placed one on 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 battery, hoí for two batteries, and a mixture

of the second word and 'many' for more than two batteries. The second experiment, however, started with ten batteries on the table, and batteries were subtracted one at a time. In this experiment, one speaker used hói (the word previously supposed to mean 'one') when there were six batteries left, and all four speakers used that word consistently when there were as many as three batteries left. Though Frank and his colleagues do not attempt to explain their subjects' difference in behavior in these two experiments, they conclude that the two words under investigation "are much more likely to be relative or comparative terms like 'few' or 'fewer' than absolute terms like 'one' ".

Pirahã Phonology ( Taken from Wikipedia )
The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically simplest languages known, claimed to
have as few as ten phonemes (one fewer than Rotokas). This requires analysing [k] as an underlying /hi/. Although odd cross-linguistically, Ian Maddieson has found in researching Pirahã data that /k/ indeed has an unusual distribution.  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 Everett), bringing the number of phonemes to at least twelve. Sheldon (1988)
claims three tones, high (¹), mid (²) and low (³).

Phoneme inventory
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 the nature of their
phonological systems.

Consonant Chart ( The segmental phoneme )

[k] has been claimed to be an optional portmanteau of /hi/. Women sometimes
substitute /h/ for /s/.

 Vowel Chart