Brazil

The goal of this paper is to gently introduce topological concepts to non-topologists, and linguistics to non-linguists. Topological ideas are articulated in many languages but are often not recognized by researchers who speak indo-european languages in which geometrical ideas dominate. In the Palikur language of Brazil, it is global topological properties (like wholeness, boundary, and interior)―not local geometrical properties (like shape and size)―that determines the classification of every noun and affects the numerals, verbs, adjectives, and spatial prepositions in the language.