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The Teachings of Tokunupei
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- By Gunter Senft
- Edited by Jean Kommers, Eric Venbrux
- Dave Lyddon, Kurt Vandaele
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- Book:
- Cultural Styles of Knowledge Transmission
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 21 January 2021
- Print publication:
- 14 February 2009, pp 139-144
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Summary
In February 1983 the most popular song of the adolescents of Tauwema was ‘Imdeduya’. It is a rather schmaltzy song with four stanzas, a refrain, a lovely melody, and the following lyrics:
1.)
When the moon rises from the east
I had a dream of you my love:
Labi gibobwaili, I spoke words of love
Please remember me!
Take me down to Vau,
let me travel along the coast,
come along with me tonight
before you change your mind.
Refrain (repeated after every stanza)
Imdeduyo, Imdeduyo, Imdeduyo, Imdeduyo,
kwanvedi, bakenu. move a bit, I will lie down.
Yegu Yolina. I am Yolina.
Levavegu kesa’i, They hit me the waves,
nemtamata vovogu. tiredness (is in my) body
Imdeduyo, Imdeduyo, Imdeduyo, Imdeduyo,
kwanvedi, bakenu. move a bit, I will lie down.
2.)
Kalasila isalili - The sun goes down -
niva’ila wa idamu calm sea only smooth sea.
Ikeboku ula simla - It is calm (not windy) my island –
deli wala kayoyugu. with (me there’s) only my sorrow.
3.)
Tubukona iyuvola The moon rises
mapilana obomatu - at this side of the east -
madagila visigala - very nice it shines -
iomau ninamaisi. it is sad for their minds.
4.)
Yum yam, wiki wiki, Day (after) day, week (after) week,
tubukona - taitu taitu. month - year (after) year.
Akayoyu ulo valu - I fly to my village -
avaituta bagisi? when will I see you (again)?
I liked the song, transcribed it, and sang it accompanying myself with my accordion.
The people of Tauwema enjoyed my playing their song, and one evening after I had finished my ‘performance’, Gerubara, one of chief Kilagola's sons, came to me and told me a 20 minute long version of the story of Imdeduya and Yolina. Thus I learned that the lyrics of the song which was classified as a ‘wosi tauwau topaisewa’ – a ‘song about migrant workers (from the Trobriands)’ refers with the protagonists’ names and in its refrain to one of the most important myths of the Trobriand Islands. In the song Yolina has turned into a worker who lives far away from the Trobriands in another part of Papua New Guinea but hopes to fly back one day to see his sweetheart Imdeduya again.
13 - Reference and ‘référence dangereuse’ to persons in Kilivila: an overview and a case study
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- By Gunter Senft, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Edited by N. J. Enfield, Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, The Netherlands, Tanya Stivers, Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, The Netherlands
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- Book:
- Person Reference in Interaction
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 April 2007, pp 309-337
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Summary
Gräfin: Den Namen! Nur kurz.
Baron: Mit dem Namen anzufangen, würden wir erst in unendliche Umschweife geraten
J. W. GoetheIntroduction
This chapter presents an analysis and case study of the system of person reference in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. First, based on conversation analysts' insights into forms of third-person reference mainly in English (Sacks and Schegloff 1979, this volume, Schegloff 1996a), this chapter presents the inventory of forms that Kilivila offers its speakers for making such references. To illustrate in more detail, a case study on gossiping is presented in the second part of the chapter. In the example analysed, ambiguous anaphoric references to two initial mentions of third persons turn out not only to exceed and even violate the frame of a clearly defined situational-intentional variety of Kilivila that is constituted by the genre ‘gossip’, but also are extremely dangerous for speakers in the Trobriand Islanders' society. I illustrate how this culturally dangerous situation escalates and how other participants of the group of gossiping men try to repair this violation of the frame of a culturally defined and metalinguistically labelled ‘way of speaking’ (see Sherzer 1983). The chapter ends with some general remarks on how the understanding of forms of person reference in a language is dependent on the culture specific context in which those forms are produced.
6 - Prolegomena to a Kilivila grammar of space
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- By Gunter Senft, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
- Edited by Stephen C. Levinson, Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, The Netherlands, David P. Wilkins, San Francisco State University
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- Book:
- Grammars of Space
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 14 September 2006, pp 206-229
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter presents preliminary remarks on some of the central linguistic means speakers of Kilivila use in expressing their conceptions of space, that is, for referring to objects, persons and events in space. After a brief characterization of the language and its speakers, the chapter sketches how specific topological relations are encoded, how motion events are described and what frames of spatial reference are preferred in what contexts for what means and ends. The paper ends with a summary of the major patterns in topology, motion and frames of references, and with a programmatic outline of how to write a complete grammar of space.
Kilivila – the language of the Trobriand Islanders
Kilivila, the language of the Trobriand Islanders, is one of forty Austronesian languages spoken in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. It is an agglutinative language and its general word-order pattern is VOS (Senft 1986). The Austronesian languages spoken in Milne Bay Province are grouped into twelve language families; one of them is labelled Kilivila. The Kilivila language family encompasses the languages Budibud (or Nada, with about 200 speakers), Muyuw (or Murua, with about 4,000 speakers) and Kilivila (or Kiriwina, Boyowa, with about 25,000 speakers); Kilivila is spoken on the islands Kiriwina, Vakuta, Kitava, Kaile'una, Kuiawa, Munuwata and Simsim. The languages Muyuw and Kilivila are each split into mutually understandable local dialects.