Pirahã is the indigenous language of the Pirahã tribe. The tribe resides along the banks of the Maici River in the Amazon. With an approximated three-hundred recorded speakers, this language is inevitably unique. Pirahã is one of the most phonologically simple languages in existence, with only ten phonemes (units of sound). In our quest to understand human language, there is one feature that makes this language particularly interesting: it may lack terms for exact numbers. 

Since there are very few living speakers and even fewer experts on Pirahã, the possibility that the language has no exact numbers can only be attested to by linguist Dr. Daniel Evertt, who has studied Pirahã for over thirty years. Everett postulates that the Pirahã lack exact words for numbers because their language does not allow for embedding, or recursion. Everett claims that this could be the result of culture shaping the nature of grammar.

What is recursion? This word has many applications, but can generally be thought of as an idea within an idea. When you try to define something by using the thing itself as the explanation, that’s recursion. For example, if I were to define a Matryoshka doll by saying that a Matryoshka is a doll with other Matryoshka dolls within it. In language, recursion is the ability to embed one clause into another clause. We can use “John’s brother’s house” as an example. “John’s brother” is an embedded clause within the sentence “John’s brother’s house”. In this example, one can only understand the sentence if they understand the meaning of the embedded clause, which implies that John has a brother.

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