Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We present a preliminary quantitative analysis of (s) variation in Pirahã. Previous research noted a gender difference in (s) use in which women use [h] in environments where men use [s]. Using word list data, we analyze (s) rates among three men and three women. Our results indicate that women do utilize [h] more than men, but neither use one variant categorically. Furthermore, (s) is more phonetically variable, and varies in more environments, than previously described. We argue that (s) is undergoing lenition from [s] to [h], and that this change is led by women. This suggests the “female lead” found in many sound change studies is not restricted to the West. The pattern is even more striking because social and cultural factors operate very differently in the Pirahã context. We evaluate whether current explanations for the female lead in sound change are applicable in Pirahã.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it