the age of an individual is not measured chronologically in Amondawa culture, which lacks a numerical system able to enumerate above four. Rather, individuals are categorized in terms of stages or periods of the lifespan, based upon social status and role, and position in family birth order. As we have also noted, each Amondawa individual changes their name during the course of their life, and the rules governing these name changes form a strict onomastic system.
Courtesy Language Hat, Stan Carey on “When Time is not Space: The social and linguistic construction of time intervals and temporal event relations in an Amazonian culture,” a paper by Chris Sinha et al. in Language and Cognition.
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