Re: Piraha, Uoiauai (was: Seen on alt.language.artificial)

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/12/05 

Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 05:32:31 GMT

Jacques Guy wrote:
>
> António Marques wrote:
> >
> > Jacques Guy wrote:
> >
> > > If it smells like a hoax, feels like a hoax, looks like
> > > a hoax,sounds like a hoax... what is it?
>
> > Ah, but it's a *poor* hoax.
>
> When I did my PhD I was tempted to invent the language
> which was the topic of my thesis. Almost nothing was known
> about it. My thesis supervisors even doubted that it was
> Austronesian. But I decided that it would be too much
> hard work. Much easier to learn and describe the real
> language. If I had made it up, however, I would have
> made it internally consistent, not like _this_. I gave
> a few examples of Piraha inconsistencies on the Voynich
> group (two messages, which you'll find half-way down
> the first page of Google answers to "piraha").
>
> So far I have come across six texts, two of which
> are practically still unanalyzed (follow the links
> I give in my message at voynich.net). After 25 years
> of field work, that's a bit... slim.
>
> > So poor indeed that one thinks it can't be a
> > real hoax!

That kinda ties in with what Dan Everett posts to LINGUIST List every so
often.

The language that's the exception to every typological and implicational
universal.

Oh -- could it be a dialect of Klingon?

[vide infra]

> Take a look at those texts:
>
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001009234649/http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/Martins.html"
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001009234649/http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/Opisi.html"
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001009234649/http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/kato.html"
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001009234649/http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/spirits.html"
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001009234649/http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/anaconda.html"
> "http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/info/staff/DE/panther.pdf"
>
> And then, have a look at the phonemic statement:
>
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001009114233/amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/lang.html"
>
> And at the "dictionary"
>
> "http://web.archive.org/web/20001109203800/amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/dictionary.html"
>
> Sure, it warns you that "this is a preliminary dictionary". Pity,
> because if it was
> anywhere near a "more complete" dictionary Piraha could boast not only
> the smallest
> phonemic inventory, but also the smallest vocabulary.
>
> As for the other one, Voiauai or Uoiauai in Brazil "which consists
> only of 7 vowels and has no consonants", I found the source of the
> mystery. It turns up in various collection of word oddities
> as one of the longest words composed entirely of vowels.
> Some bright bulb apparently figured out that the language
> itself had seven vowels and no consonants. By that
> reasoning French has only three consonants and two vowels.

No, five consonants and one vowel. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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