A CIRCLE HAS NO CORNERS

Topological perceptions in the Palikur language

Diana M Green 2023
Over two hundred languages are spoken in the country of Brazil. Most of them are Amerindian
languages which are facing extinction. These languages are treasures that reveal very different ways
of perceiving and describing the world. For example, the word for “toe” in the Bakairí language of
southern Brazil is ‘foot-fruit,’ a term based on the environment. The word for “toe” in Portuguese
(the national language) is dedo do pé ‘foot-finger,’ which is based on a body part. The word for
“toe” in the Palikur (Polly-KOOR) language of northern Brazil is ‘foot-protrusion,’ which is based
on shape. It appears that the Palikur people may have a more geometrical mindset than the others.
After living with the Palikur people in a monolingual situation for over twelve years, I can confirm
that they are constantly aware of the geometrical and topological form of the objects they talk about.
Bakairí people say, “My foot has five fruits.”1 Palikur people say, “My foot has a set of five units
of repeated protrusions.” Yes, the Palikur express themselves in a far more precise geometrical and
mathematical way.
The Palikur love to cram as much information as possible into one word. They just keep adding
suffixes—up to nine on a single word. 2 Linguists call these meaningful parts “morphemes.” For
example, the Palikur word for “set of repeated protrusions” is bababet. Let’s break that down a bit
into its morphemes, ba-ba-bet.
 One protrusion is ba;
 Repeated protrusions are ba-ba;
 The -bet on the end means “a set (with several similar members).”
Together they form one word meaning “a set of repeated protrusions.”
Speaking of fruits, the Palikur people like to eat bread-fruit. The word for
bread-fruit is babay. Can you tell why? If we break the word up into its parts,
we would write it as ba-ba-y (protrusion -protrusion -DUR). The -y suffix
(DUR) means a durable characteristic. It’s like the suffix “-ly” in English
adjectives (not adverbs), where a person who is always kind is “kind-ly” or a
person who is always sick is “sick-ly.” The durable characteristic of this fruit
is its possession of repeated protrusions. It is prick-ly.
The Palikur people also like to eat star-fruit. How would you describe a
star-fruit? The Palikur people describe it with one brief word: babapit. If we
break that word up into its parts, we would write it as ba-ba-pit (protrusion
-protrusion -OV.) The -pit suffix (OV) means the “overall continuity” or
“integral wholeness” of an object. So the word babapit means “repeated protrusions composing the
overall continuity” of the fruit. That is, the whole thing is made up of protrusions!
Why would the Palikur even think about the “overall continuity” of something? Unlike the
“durative” suffix “-ly” in English adjectives, there is no suffix for the idea of “overall continuity” in
common English. But there is in Palikur! Even though the
Palikur language is spoken only by a small group of
Indians in the Amazon rain-forest, its suffixes express well
over a hundred more geometrical, topological, and
mathematical concepts than English suffixes do.
1
Bakairí has a binary numerical system which is based on the number “two,” so “five” is literally 2+2+1. Palikur has a
decimal system based on the number “ten.” The number “five” is pohowku. See Diana Green (1997).
2
This “gluing” together of one morpheme onto another makes Palikur an “agglutinative” language, like Turkish,
Swahili, Quechua and many others.
 Protrusions are a geometrical idea, but the idea of “overall continuity” is not. It is a topological
idea that does not refer to a shape but rather to a non-measurable property of the whole of an object.
In the Palikur language, topology rules.
In languages of Indo-European descent, however, geometry dominates. For example, most
speakers of such languages would describe the shape of a bread-fruit geometrically, as “round” or
“oval” but definitely not “square.” It comes as a surprise that Palikur speakers normally use only
one term to describe both round and square items. That term is huwi-pa-pit-pi
(complete_separate_boundary ˗symmetrical -overall_unity -state). Students of topology would not
be surprised by this at all, because they know that a round form is topologically identical 3
(“homeomorphic”) to a square one, since they both have a complete closed boundary that can
theoretically be stretched into either shape. (A “boundary,” in Palikur, is the whole outer surface or
limit of a person or thing.4)
When they need to, Palikur speakers can specify that something is square in contrast to round,
but even this specification is done in a topological way. They describe a square block (or a square
painted face design) with a pair of words: huwi-pa-pit-pi ka-tusri-bet ‘having a complete
symmetrical boundary and overall continuity, with a set of corners.’ But they describe a circle (or a
round house) as ma-tusri-ye, (without-corners-DUR) ‘cornerless.’ Corners/angles are geometric
shapes but the cornerlessness of a circle is a property that concerns the “continuity” of the circle as
a whole. Thus “cornerlessness” is a topological concept.
Think of topology as the “twin brother” of geometry. They seem a lot alike but they are very
different. Geometry is the study of local measurable characteristics of an object, like width and
height and curvature, but topology is the study of overall physical characteristics that cannot be
measured.5 Protrusions and corners (angles) can be measured. They are geometrical. But “overall
continuity” is not a measurable concept.
Speakers of most modern languages find it hard to grasp these non-measurable topological
properties. Even though every object in the universe has intrinsic topological features, these features
do not appear in the structure of their languages. But the Palikur language overflows with them. As
a result, Palikur speakers are deeply aware of both geometrical and topological concepts, at least of
those that can be observed in the natural world.6 For the Palikur people, topology is not a theoretical
or mathematical subject. It is an extremely practical matter of describing daily reality, and it is
manifested quite clearly in both their speech and their art.
In Palikur, some of the most important characteristics of an object are the kind of “overall
continuity,” “boundary,” “interior,” and “extendedness” that an object has. Each concept is
3
See the animation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-eJW0gEm5w to understand how a circle and square are
topologically identical from a mathematician’s viewpoint. An especially creative video on the subject can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgKc7dFz-ko. Another excellent site is https://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-in-the-
world-is-topological-quantum-matter, which explains not only squares and circles, but also the usefulness of topology
in understanding quantum matter. In this animation the simplified terms “middle,” “edge,” and “hole” represent “inte-
rior,” “boundary,” and the Palikur “open interior.” The term “exotic phases” corresponds to Palikur “extendedness.”
4
The physical topological property “boundary” is not the same as the semantic grammatical property “boundedness.”
5
The structure of the material universe could not be understood without considering its topology. The Encyclopaedia
Britannica notes that “The concepts of topology, by virtue of their [broader] and qualitative nature, are capable of
detecting order where the concepts of geometry and analysis can see only chaos.” (John Stillwell 2017)
6
A long-term anthropological study of the Palikur by Lesley J F Green and David R Green (2013) states: “[A]n
understanding of the particular ecologies of knowledge in [Palikur communities] begins with the “re-cognition” that
the philosophy of space here is not reducible to a structure of abstract planes. Instead of “space” as an extensive
container, there are surfaces, skins, bodies, boundaries, temporalities, presences, and intensivities. .… Recognizing
that the extensive and quantifiable spaces and times bequeathed by Euclid, Descartes, Newton, and Kant are not [the
only way of perceiving our physical world] is the beginning of the possibility of generative dialogue between
scholarship and the intellectual heritages of everyday life on the margins.”
expressed by a specific suffix. Other significant suffixes concern an object’s “compactedness,”
“symmetry” and “connectedness”―all of which are topological factors.
We may think that modern mathematicians, physicists and psychologists were the first people to
grasp such concepts. However, Palikur people were articulating those ideas hundreds of years
before them. Of course, their language and topologists’ language have evolved quite differently,
according to their own specific situations and necessities. The Palikur would never think of points
on a continuum as mathematicians do. One wouldn’t expect an exact equivalence, but there are
certainly connections and similarities which point to universal truths that we all need to be aware of.
Using mathematical topology, brilliant physicists have made huge advances in understanding
such things as electromagnetic fields, on which so many of our modern devices, like cell-phones,
are dependent. On our cell-phone screens, we can stretch a picture with our fingers. This stretching
is part of a topological idea called “extendedness.” Just as Palikur has a suffix -pit that expresses the
topological idea of “the overall unity of an object,” it also has a suffix that often expresses the
idea of “extendedness” in one direction (as well as other extremes). That suffix is -min.
The wooden Palikur arrowhead pictured to the right is described as being kababaminyo.
The meaningful parts of this adjective are: ka-ba-ba-min-y-o:
(having -protrusion -protrusion -extended -DUR -feminine)
which means ‘having repeated protrusions along something extended.’
The suffix -min occurs in many adjectives, and sometimes more than once in the same
word. When one young Palikur man saw a large city for the very first time (from an airplane)
he shouted, “Babamnamnapadmin!” Now, there’s a word! If we break it down into its
meaningful parts, we see: ba-ba -min-pa -min-pa -ad -min.7
 The ba-ba, of course, means ‘protrusion-protrusion’ or “repeated protrusions.”
 Then comes -min, “extended” which here means “stretched up, tall.”8
 The next suffix, -pa, means “spread over a wide area.”
 Then we see that -min together with -pa is repeated a second time: “minpa-minpa.” This
reduplication means there were many, many of these tall protrusions all over the place.
 The next suffix, -ad, means “big, huge, or vast.”
 Then there is a final -min, which, in this position, means “extending far beyond” anything
you can imagine.9 So, the meaning of ba-ba -min-pa -min-pa -ad -min is:
protrusion-protrusion -extended -widespread -extended -widespread -vast -extended_beyond
‘repeated protrusions, many, tall, widespread, vast, beyond comprehension’
Many of us would need to use a long sentence to describe a city to someone who had never seen
one before, but a Palikur speaker can pack it all into one adjective. This entire word was coined on
the spot and likely had never been spoken before, yet any Palikur speaker would immediately
understand it, and they would have a good idea of what a city looks like from the air. Impressive!
Another impressive feature of Palikur is that it has over eighty suffixes called “classifiers.”
Classifiers are a required part of speech that English does not have. They express certain properties
of the referent (i.e., the noun being referred to). The suffixes -pit and -min that we have already

7
When a Palikur word is spoken quickly, the syllables get scrunched together, just as in English, one might say,
“I wanna” instead of saying “I want to.” In Palikur, the sound /p/ is always pronounced [m] before a nasal sound.
8
Many people would call these extended protrusions “tall buildings” which is a geometrical description, since tallness
(height) can be measured. More picturesquely, the buildings might be called “skyscrapers,” but neither of these
descriptions express a non-measurable idea of general “extension” like the Palikur description does.
9
The concepts that topologists work with enable them to mathematically describe objects with four or more dimensions
that are almost impossible to comprehend, such as the Klein bottle and the hypercube (tesseract). The Palikur people
use an analogous way of thinking to describe similar ideas through their use of the morpheme -min.
discussed are classifiers. In the Palikur language, classifiers occur in verbs, adjectives, prepositions,
and numbers. The following table displays three major classifiers of objects: -pit, -min, and -iku,
with anglicized examples of how they are used.
Important classifying suffixes in the Palikur language
(Number suffixes often sound different but apply to the same topological form.)
classifying suffix -pita / -pit / -w -mina /-min / -t -iku
in different parts (used if the referent has (used if the referent is (used if the referent has a
of speech separate overall unity) extended /beyond normal) hole, cavity, or open interior)
in VERBS Wash-pita the ball! Paint-mina the pole! Clean-iku the well!
in ADJECTIVES The ball is clean-pit. The pole is tall-min. The well is clean-iku.
in PREPOSITIONS Mud was on-pit the ball. A bug is on-min the pole. Water is in-iku the well.
in NUMBERS one-w ball one-t pole one-iku well

One final observation: as a native English speaker, I am often asked if my understanding of the
world has changed since I became a fluent speaker of Palikur. Do I see things differently now? I
would have to say that I don’t see things differently, but rather more fully. I was trained from
childhood to see objects geometrically, in terms of shape and size. However, the structure of the
Palikur language is based on seeing objects topologically, in terms of their separate boundary (the
overall exterior) and their wholeness and coherence, etc. When I make a snowball I am perfectly
aware that it is round (geometrically) but now I also know that I am causing the snow to have a
boundary (topologically) and giving it a continuity and individuality it had not previously
possessed. I would never have consciously thought of that before I studied the Palikur language.
The verb I would use to tell a Palikur person that I “made” a snowball, is
one that is commonly employed by the Palikur people for shaping bread
dough into a loaf or for making coils of clay to mold a clay pot from. That
verb, divided into its meaningful parts, is huwi-pit-asa:
 The first part, huwi, means “a separate boundary or surface.”
 Then comes -pit, “overall continuity” or an “integrated whole.”
 And the final suffix, -asa, means “to cause.” So, huwi˗pit˗asa means
separate_boundary ˗overall_unity ˗cause
‘to cause [snow] to stick together as a separate integrated whole’
To me, this Palikur verb is far more precise and beautiful than a simple
“make.” What fundamental insight a topological viewpoint provides―by
discerning the individuality, wholeness, integrity and coherence of an object. These properties are
the very ones that make the difference between “matter” (like snow) and an “object” (like a
snowball).10 All living creatures need to understand that difference in order to survive. If they didn’t
they would not be able to recognize what objects are. 11 And boundary and continuity are not the
only distinct bits of topological information that are detailed in the Palikur suffixes. There are
several more!
It is remarkable-min (i.e., surpassingly remarkable) that these normally unconscious concepts
10
When Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain hemorrhaged, she wrote, “I could no longer discern the physical boundaries of where I
began and where I ended. I sensed the composition of my being as a fluid rather than a solid. I no longer perceived
myself as a whole separate object...Instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me.” (2008:42).
11
Hespos and Spelke, 2004, among others, have proven that infants are born equipped with a “core knowledge” of topo-
logical properties. For example, all babies are aware of separate boundaries, “edge and surface assignment” and that
“one object cannot pass through the space occupied by another” (Spelke 2003). Also, infants react strongly when a
solid object suddenly develops a hole (Chien, et al 2012). In their first weeks of life, “infants reliably discriminate
stimuli based on topological differences, but fail to do so with geometric differences" (Zhou, et al 2010).
were brought to the point of articulation, and then to the formation of all object classification in
every part of the Palikur language!
I hope that this small taste of the Palikur language will help prepare you to dive into the book,
TOPOLOGY BASED CLASSIFICATION IN THE PALIKUR LANGUAGE which is now being
prepared for publication by me and my son, David R Green. That book provides empirical proof
that most of the classifiers in the Palikur language are based on topological concepts. These
seemingly unique ideas are probably articulated in many lesser-known languages. The time has
come for us to be more aware of them.

References:
Chien, S H L and Yun-Lan Lin, Wenli Qian, Ke Zhou, Ming-Kuan Lin, Hsin-Yueh Hsu. 2012. With or without a hole:
Young infants' sensitivity for topological versus geometric property. Perception volume 41, pages 305-318. Graduate
Institute of Neural and Cognitive Sciences, Taiwan 40402, Republic of China.
Green, Diana. 1997. Differences between numerical terms in some indigenous languages of Brazil
<https://www.academia.edu/39761035>
Green, Lesley J.F. & David R. Green. 2013. Knowing the Day, Knowing the World: Engaging Amerindian Thought in
Public Archaeology. 320 pp. University of Arizona Press.
Hespos, SJ, and Spelke ES. 2004. Conceptual precursors to language. Nature. Jul 22;430(6998):453-6. doi:
10.1038/nature02634. PMID: 15269769; PMCID: PMC1415221. Harvard University.
<http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:5109359>
Spelke, Elizabeth S. 2003.What makes us smart? Core knowledge and natural language. In D. Gentner & S. Goldin-
Meadow (Eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought (pp. 277–311). Cambridge, MA &
London:MIT Press.
Stillwell, John Colin & Ian Stewart. 2017. Analysis Mathematics Encyclopaedia Britannica
<https://www.britannica.com/science/analysis-mathematics/Rebuilding-the-foundations>
Taylor, Jill Bolte. 2008. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Viking. 192 pp.
Zhou, Ke and Huan Luo, Tiangang Zhou, Yan Zhuo, and Lin Chen. 2010. Topological change disturbs object
continuity in attentive tracking. State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing. Edited by Robert Desimone, MIT, Cambridge, MA.

I am profoundly grateful to physicist Dr. C. Jeynes of the University of Surrey Ion Beam Centre, England, and to
topologist Dr. Christine Kinsey of Canisius College, New York, for helping me―a linguist―to understand a bit of what
topology is all about. Their personal explanations and suggestions gave me the invaluable insights I needed in order to
understand how topological the Palikur language is.