Acquiring complexity: the Portuguese of some Piraha Men

Abstract

The Piraha language has been claimed to have no syntactic complexity. What happens when speakers of this language come into contact with another, more complex language? This paper reflects on the Portuguese used by a group of men of the Amazonian Piraha people. My study shows that when speaking Portuguese, most Piraha speakers employ simple syntactic constructions, characterised by juxtaposition of main clauses rather than embedding. Yet, the more proficient speakers utilize constructions that on the surface look more complex. These involve Portuguese subordinating conjunctions and complement clauses, both instances that could be analysed as complex constructions. While the subordinating conjunctions can be explained in terms of transfer and discourse marking functions, one particular speaker uses a Portuguese complement clause that could be analysed as a syntactically intermediate structure between Piraha juxtaposition and Portuguese embedding.

Keywords

• clause-combining
• Portuguese
• Piraha