Panãra, an Indigenous language native to Brazil, is currently the focus of Dr. Myriam Lapierre, Sunkulp Ananthanarayan, Ella De Falco, and Jessamine Jeter as some of the only linguists to document and conduct a comprehensive study on this language. Our research focuses on streamlining the process of organizing and analyzing field data – specifically in the context of Panãra, though generally applicable to other Indigenous and/or under-researched languages  – for use in future research by Dr. Lapierre and other scholars in the field of linguistics as it applies to Indigenous and minoritized languages. We have digitized the data from the field journals of Dr. Lapierre and the graduate students working with her, and our current focus is on the analysis of verb and sentence construction, via this digitized data, to organize grammatical paradigms into efficient and accessible indexes. We are also compiling and organizing PDF, image, sound, video, and experimental data for use on the California Language Archive (CLA) with a similar focus on efficiency and accessibility. The completion of this research entails the more complex understanding and organization of Panãra sentence and word structure for use in future research, both by Dr. Lapierre and by other scholars, as well as for usage in a Panãra dictionary. Our expected results also involve the creation and organization of the CLA page dedicated to Panãra, with a transparent structure making this data available to a wider audience of both linguists and non-linguists interested in learning more about the language.

The use of space to represent abstract concepts is integral to how humans understand and process the world around them. This study is interested in the Western tendency to organize abstract information on a left-to-right basis. This includes the organization of temporal information (the mental timeline) as well as numerical information (the mental number line). Researchers have examined this phenomenon in conjunction with Western left-to-right writing systems and have hypothesized that the development of the mental timeline and number line is strengthened as writing and reading experiences develop. The present study seeks to examine the effects of early literacy skills on the development of the mental timeline and number line, as well as compare how children organize temporal and numerical information. Preschool-aged children (N=24, aged 3.5-4 years, data collection is ongoing) were presented with three cards that either featured events in a story (temporal activity) or different quantities (numerical activity). Participants were then asked to arrange these cards in order of first to last for the temporal activity and smallest to biggest for the numerical activity. Participants also participated in a Concepts of Print assessment to assess their early literacy skills. The number of LTR lines created was compared to Concepts of Print score. Temporal sequences were most commonly represented through left-to-right lines and numerical sequences were most commonly arranged non-linearly, with neither suggesting an association with early literacy. These findings raise further questions on the origins of the mental timeline and number line, as well as imply that literacy skills are not the sole contributor to this development. In examining how literacy skills may contribute to enhancing spatial cognitive abilities related to spatial representation prominent in STEM subjects, we can reevaluate the traditional dichotomy between the arts and STEM fields.

Sound symbolism is a phenomenon wherein the phonetic forms of certain words iconically represent attributes of the objects, qualities, or events they describe. This study focuses on the sound-meaning link in Panãra animal names, using vocabulary from field notes collected in the Panãra community by Dr. Lapierre the summers of 2015-19 and by Dr. Lapierre and PhD students Ananthanarayan, De Falco, and Jeter the summer of 2023. The Panãra vowel system has a combination of features not present in some more widely studied languages such as English, namely, a back, unrounded series, contrastive length, and contrastive nasality. Using this extensive inventory, I assess strength of size sound symbolism created by nasality, height, vowel length, and backness, as well as the interactions between multiple features. I organize Panãra names for different animals and find the average weight of that species. I calculate the percentage of vowels that have a certain feature in a word and assess the correlation between this percentage and the weight of the species denoted using a regression model. Previous research has shown that front and high vowels are associated with smaller sizes and back and low vowels with larger sizes. I predict that the phonetically central and mid series will be associated with sizes intermediate to the peripheral series. Alongside providing observations from an under-documented language regarding its sound symbolism, findings from this study will help guide the continued lexicographic and field research inquiries into the Panãra language.