Presentations

Abstract

In 1997 Moagava, a 29 year old man living in the village of Tauwema on Kaile'una, one of the Trobriand Islands in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea, told a group of children and some adults the story of Morevaya and Bukuruvi. In this talk I first present this tale in morpheme-interlinear transcription and translation, then I look at the text in detail with respect to both its form and content. This analysis reveals the macro- and micro-structure of the tale and isolates the verbal means used by the narrator which indicate the linearization principles that underlie the macrostructure of the story. The talk ends with some concluding remarks on the anthropological-linguistic and cognitive linguistic significance of studies like the present one.

Abstract

In 1997 Kalavatu, a 45 year old man living in the village of Tauwema on Kaile'una, one of the Trobriand Islands in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea, told a group of children and some adults the story of Kavalokwa. In this talk I first present this tale in morpheme-interlinear transcription and translation (see handout), then I look at the text in detail with respect to both its form and content. This analysis reveals the macrostructure of the tale and isolates the verbal means used by the narrator which indicate the linearization principles that underlie this macrostructure of the story. The talk ends with some concluding remarks on the anthropological-linguistic and cognitive linguistic significance of studies like the present one.

Abstract

How stable is the lexicon for perceptual experiences? This paper presents results on how the Trobrianders talk about taste and color, and how these have changed over the years. In 2008 I continued fieldwork on the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea with the aim of researching the Trobriand Islanders’ language of perception. In 1983 I collected data on Kilivila color terms. The first part of the paper compares these data with the data I collected in 2008. Some of the predictions I made about the development of color categories in 1983 were right. Integrating English color terms as foreign words, the Kilivila color term lexicon has changed from a typical stage IIIb into a stage VII color term lexicon (Berlin & Kay 1969). However, traditional color terms as well as folkbotany terms that refer to plants, fruits and soils used to make colors for dyeing grass-skirts are still used. I also compare the data on taste vocabulary that I collected in 1982/83 with the results of my 2008 taste term elicitation experiment with a taste kit developed by the language and cognition group. I could not find and observe substantial change in this domain. Kilivila provides evidence that terms used for talking about color and taste are relatively stable over time, with just a few effects of language change induced by language contact.