Displaying 1 - 17 of 17
-
Senft, G. (2020). “.. to grasp the native's point of view..” — A plea for a holistic documentation of the Trobriand Islanders' language, culture and cognition. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 24(1), 7-30. doi:10.22363/2687-0088-2020-24-1-7-30.
Abstract
In his famous introduction to his monograph “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” Bronislaw
Malinowski (1922: 24f.) points out that a “collection of ethnographic statements, characteristic
narratives, typical utterances, items of folk-lore and magical formulae has to be given as a corpus
inscriptionum, as documents of native mentality”. This is one of the prerequisites to “grasp the
native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”. Malinowski managed
to document a “Corpus Inscriptionum Agriculturae Quriviniensis” in his second volume of “Coral
Gardens and their Magic” (1935 Vol II: 79-342). But he himself did not manage to come up with a
holistic corpus inscriptionum for the Trobriand Islanders. One of the main aims I have been pursuing
in my research on the Trobriand Islanders' language, culture, and cognition has been to fill this
ethnolinguistic niche. In this essay, I report what I had to do to carry out this complex and ambitious
project, what forms and kinds of linguistic and cultural competence I had to acquire, and how I
planned my data collection during 16 long- and short-term field trips to the Trobriand Islands
between 1982 and 2012. The paper ends with a critical assessment of my Trobriand endeavor. -
Senft, G. (2020). Kampfschild - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, S. Schien, & S. Stoll (
Eds. ), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch (pp. 58-59). Freiburg: Michael Imhof Verlag.Additional information
Picture -
Senft, G. (2020). 32 Kampfschild - dance or war shield - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, & S. Stoll (
Eds. ), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch. Texte zur Ausstellung, Städtische Museen Freiburg, vom 20. Juni 2020 bis 10. Januar 2021 (pp. 76-77). Freiburg: Städtische Museen. -
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., Senft, B., & Senft, G. (1998). Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'. In Ethnologie - Humanethologische Begleitpublikationen von I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt und Mitarbeitern. Sammelband I, 1985-1987. Göttingen: Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film.
-
Pederson, E., Danziger, E., Wilkins, D. G., Levinson, S. C., Kita, S., & Senft, G. (1998). Semantic typology and spatial conceptualization. Language, 74(3), 557-589. doi:10.2307/417793.
-
Senft, G. (1998). Body and mind in the Trobriand Islands. Ethos, 26, 73-104. doi:10.1525/eth.1998.26.1.73.
Abstract
This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic datafit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them as a kind of ethnopsychological theory about the body and its role for emotions, knowledge, thought, memory, and so on? Can these idioms be understood as representation of Trobriand ethnopsychological theory? -
Senft, G. (1998). 'Noble Savages' and the 'Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in 'Popular Publications'. In J. Wassmann (
Ed. ), Pacific answers to Western hegemony: Cultural practices of identity construction (pp. 119-140). Oxford: Berg Publishers. -
Senft, G. (1998). [Review of the book Anthropological linguistics: An introduction by William A. Foley]. Linguistics, 36, 995-1001.
-
Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (
Eds. ), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter. -
Brown, P., Senft, G., & Wheeldon, L. (
Eds. ). (1992). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual report 1992. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics. -
Levinson, S. C., Brown, P., Danzinger, E., De León, L., Haviland, J. B., Pederson, E., & Senft, G. (1992). Man and Tree & Space Games. In S. C. Levinson (
Ed. ), Space stimuli kit 1.2 (pp. 7-14). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2458804.Abstract
These classic tasks can be used to explore spatial reference in field settings. They provide a language-independent metric for eliciting spatial language, using a “director-matcher” paradigm. The Man and Tree task deals with location on the horizontal plane with both featured (man) and non-featured (e.g., tree) objects. The Space Games depict various objects (e.g. bananas, lemons) and elicit spatial contrasts not obviously lexicalisable in English.Additional information
1992_Man_and_tree_and_space_games_stimuli.zip -
Senft, G. (1992). Bakavilisi Biga - or: What happens to English words in the Kilivila Language? Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 23, 13-49.
-
Senft, G. (1992). Das System der Klassifikationspartikeln im Kilivila: Habilitationsschrift vorgelegt für die Habilitation (Allgemeine Linguistik) im Fachbereich I - Kommunikations- und Geschichtswissenschaften der Technischen Universität Berlin. Mimeo: Berlin.
Abstract
German Version of (1996) Classificatory particles in Kilivila. New York: Oxford University Press -
Senft, G. (1992). As time goes by..: Changes observed in Trobriand Islanders' culture and language, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. In T. Dutton (
Ed. ), Culture change, language change: Case studies from Melanesia (pp. 67-89). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. -
Senft, G. (1992). [Review of the book The Yimas language of New Guinea by William A. Foley]. Linguistics, 30, 634-639.
-
Senft, G. (1992). Everything we always thought we knew about space - but did not bother to question. Working Papers of the Cognitive Anthropology Research group at the MPI for Psycholinguistics, 10.
-
Senft, G. (1992). What happened to "the fearless tailor" in Kilivila: A European fairy tale - from the South Seas. Anthropos, 87, 407-421.
Share this page