While I was fussing about trying to take its photo while it kept trying to get away, QB told me that im pappap fo thet yem: 'it's the 'puppy' for the (cheeky) yam'.
The name for the cheeky yam in Dalabon is also yawok. When the grasshopper is making is noise (I guess mating?), Dalabon people know that the yam is ripe. What I think QB was saying with the word pappap (< puppy) is that the grasshopper is an animal indicator, for a plant. I'm sure there's a mythological reason for calling it a 'puppy', as in a pet (she also told me that mimihs (spirits) also have pappaps), but we didn't really get to that.
These 'seasonal indicators' are not uncommon. The yellow kapok flowering is a seasonal indicator that the turtles and crocodiles are laying their eggs. In this relationship, the plant is the indicator of animal behaviour, whereas the yawok(s) is in the inverse relationship.
Evans (1997) writes of sign metonymies where animals and plants in these kinds of 'indicator' relationships, or are just associated in space and interdependence, may be referred to by the same term. Obviously, yawok is such a pair. Another example comes from one dialect of Bininj Gun-Wok, where the same name (bokorn) is given to the fruit of the white apple tree, which hangs over water, and the ?rifle fish which feeds on this fruit, once it falls into the water.
I love how Kriol gives away relationships in a way neither English or the traditional language can (well, given my as-yet-still-developing Dalabon competency!!).
References
Evans, Nicholas. 1997. Sign metonymies and the problem of flora-fauna polysemy in Australian linguistics. In D. Tryon & M. Walsh, eds., Boundary Rider. Essays in Honour of Geoffrey O’Grady. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. C-136.
Evans, Nicholas, Francesca Merlan, and Maggie Tukumba. 2004. A First Dictionary of Dalabon. Maningrida: Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation.
4 comments:
Awesome! This is very cool and interesting...
Sounds like everything is going very well Baba- you are legend
Thanks Soph! Despite being back in Melbourne for a *whole* week, I'm still brimming with tales from up north. Hopefully many will appear on here before too long.
Glad to hear you're back in the country, safe and sound. xx
The mention of puppies, spirits and animal/plant relations in the one paragraph made me recall a somewhat tangental example of semantic extension from Ngarluma. The word thalu meaning 'totem', and the site where this human/animal or plant relationship is ritually enacted, has now come to mean your everyday, garden variety pet. This came up when one of my consultants referred to her puppy has her thalu. I asked what she meant (knowing the 'traditional' use of the word) and she elaborated, showing that she was indeed using it to mean general 'pet', not the kind that is the result of inherited totemic relationships.
I wonder if it's the care relationship that exists between the two entities that has prompted the extended meaning - and perhaps is part of the mix in your example too.
Thanks Sally! That may prove very useful. I'll be asking about it the next time I've got a Dalabon speaker at hand...
Post a Comment