Presentations

Abstract

This talk reports on the results of my research in 2006 and 2008 on the verbal expressions - the lexical means - Kilivila, the language of the Trobriand Islanders, offers its speakers to refer to and to describe emotions and inner feelings. Data were elicited with 18 so-called "Ekman's faces" in which the faces of three persons (one woman, two men) illustrate six allegedly universal basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and film stimuli staging and demonstrating standard emotions based on English. This latter stimulus set is called “Mind Reading Emotions Library (MREL)”. It was developed by Baron-Cohen and his co-workers in 2004. After the presentation of the data elicited with the "Ekman faces" and the MREL film clips I will discuss them on the basis of the following three research questions: How "effable" are emotions or can we observe ineffability - the difficulty or impossibility of putting experiences into words - within the domain of emotions? Do consultants agree with one another how they name emotions? Are facial expressions or situations better cues for labeling? In addition to the data elicited with these tools I also present lexical means the Trobriand Islanders use to refer to emotions and inner feelings which are documented in my overall corpus of the Kilivila language.

Abstract

The Trobriand Islanders' eschatological belief system explains in detail what happens when someone dies. Bronislaw Malinowski described essentials of this eschatology in his famous articles "Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands" and "Myth in Primitive Psychology" There he also presented the Trobrianders' belief that a spirit of the dead, a "baloma" can be reborn; he claimed that Trobrianders are unaware of the father's role as genitor. In this talk I present not only a critical review of Malinowski's ethnography of Trobriand eschatology, finally settling the "virgin birth" controversy, I also document highly ritualized songs - the "wosi milamala" - the harvest festival songs. They are sung in an archaic variety of Kilivila - the "biga baloma" - the language of the spirits of the dead. Malinowski briefly refers to these songs but does not mention that they codify many aspects of Trobriand eschatology. The songs are still sung during the harvest festival and after the death of a Trobriander, but there are only a few people left who still understand the "wosi milamala". They are a moribund genre of Kilivila - and with them the Trobriand Islanders' complex indigenous eschatology will vanish.

Abstract

This talk briefly reports on how I started my research on the Trobriand Islands, how I dealt with the situation there as a novice in field research on a Pacific island, what kind of research I have been conducting over the last 25+ years, what experiences I have had during this time, what kinds of culture and language change I have observed during all these years, and what my predictions are for the future of the Trobriand Islanders with respect to their language and their culture.

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. Concluding the paper I compare the 2008 results on taste terms with a paper on the taste vocabulary of the Torres Strait Islanders published in 1904 by Charles S. Myers. It turns out that some of his original results can still be verified. 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.

Abstract

Competition is one of the most typical and characteristic features of the Trobriand Islanders' culture and society. It permeates all areas of the Trobriand Islanders' life. However, in the dialectics of Trobriand society, competition is always based on cooperation between competitors and their supporters. This paper documents and analyzes a speech in which a man in his late thirties transmits his version of the Trobriand ideology of competition and cooperation to a group of schoolchildren in the village center of Tauwema on Kaile'una Island. The speech documents this ideology in the make; moreover, it also reveals that this ideology is already influenced by radiations of present processes of globalization, radiations which by now have reached villages as remote as Tauwema.