Presentations

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.