432 John Lynch

Reconstructed forms can be checked in Wurm and Wilson (1975).3. Henceforth, I will refer only to *bwo(e), but this should be taken to include the doublet *bwawe.4. It is just possible that Tolai pap “dog” derives from PAN *babuy by a process of semantic crossover.5. In certain parts of Northern Vanuatu, slightly deviant forms related to PPN *kulii are found. Bieria-Vowa (Epi)

shows one change, the addition of the final u, as in kuliu. A number of languages show this change plus the fronting of the first vowel, with or without compensatory labialisation of the initial consonant: e.g., Northeast Ambae kiriu, Baetora (Maewo) xiriu, yiriu, Peterara (Maewo)w/u; cf. also Valpei (Santo) wuriu. From this labialisation may have developed the initial labial consonants in Raga fwiriu, Fortsenal, Aore, Tangoa (Santo) (Xriu, Vao (Malakula) piri, and so on. I treat all of these as forms related to PPN *kulii.

6. Bulmer (1966) reports finds of pig-bones from two New Guinea Highlands sites which may be older than the earliest Austronesian-associated assemblages found in Melanesia. The latter date to about 2000 B.C. (Pawley and Green 1984, Kirch 1988).

7. See Hudson (n.d.a. and especially n.d.b) for an extended discussion of the history of the dog in Oceania.

REFERENCES

BLUST, Robert A., 1976. Austronesian Culture History: some Linguistic Inferences and their Relations to the Archaeological Record. World Archaeology, 8(1): 19-43.

BULMER, Susan, 1966. Pig Bone from Two Archaeological Sites in the New Guinea Highlands. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 75(4):504-5.

HAUDRICOURT, Andre-Georges, and Frangoise OZANNE-RIVIERRE, 1982. Dictionnaire thematique des langues de la region de Hienghêne (Nouvelle-Calêdonie). Paris, SELAF.

HUDSON, Elizabeth, n.d.a. Pigs, Pups and Poulets. MS. Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.-----------, n.d.b. Getting in Behind Oceanic Dogs. MS. Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.KIRCH, Patrick V., 1988. The Talepakemalai Lapita Site and Oceanic Prehistory. National Geographic Research,

4:328-42.LEENHARDT, Maurice, 1946. Langues et dialectes de l’Austro-Mêlanêsie. Paris, Musêe de l’Homme.PAWLEY, Andrew, and Roger C. GREEN, 1984. The Proto-Oceanic Language Community. Journal of Pacific

History, 19(3): 123-46.ROSS, Malcolm, 1988. Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia. Pacific Linguistics,.C-

98. Canberra, Australian National University.TRYON, D.T., 1976. New Hebrides Languages: an Internal Classification. Pacific Linguistics, C-50. Canberra,

Australian National University.-----------, and B.D. HACKMAN, 1983. Solomon Islands Languages: an Internal Classification. Pacific Linguistics,

C-72. Canberra, Australian National University.WURM, S.A., and B. WILSON, 1975. English Finderlist of Reconstructions in Austronesian Languages (post-

Brandstetter). Pacific Linguistics, C-33. Canberra, Australian National University.

SAYING THINGS IN KALAM: REFLECTIONS ON LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION

Andrew Pawley Australian National University

I have a confession to make. I don’t much like reading grammar books.1Of course, grammars are not in their nature very readable books, even to grammarians. Any fairly

comprehensive account of the structure of a language has to be dense - thick with the details of intricate patterns - and should be consulted like a dictionary rather than read like a novel. But consulting even the fullest of grammars can be a frustrating business. Rarely docs one grammarian’s description of a grammatical domain answer all the questions another wishes to ask about that domain.

To me, though, the most frustrating thing about grammar books is that they don’t really tell me, as a language learner or translator, how to say things in the languages they describe. By ‘how to say things’ I don’t mean vocabulary, in the dictionary sense, the names for things. I refer to the conventions for idiomatic discourse - for talking about situations and events, for telling jokes, for complaining and apologising, for accusing and denying, and so on. The thing that is said is the speaker’s meaning.2 How a thing is said is its expression, the particular choice of grammatical construction and words. The pair of sentences ‘He apologised’ and ‘He said he was sorry’ say the same thing (at one level) but say it differently.

Saying Things in Kalam 433

A language can be viewed as being (among other things) a code for saying things. There are a number of conventions that constrain how things should be said in a language generally or in particular contexts. Here I will mention only the geneal maxim: be idiomatic. This means, roughly, that the speaker (author, translator, etc.) should express the idea in terms that native speakers are accustomed to. For example, if you ask me the time and my watch shows the little hand pointing just past the 5 and the big hand pointing to the 2, an idiomatic answer would be ‘It’s ten past five’, or ‘It’s five ten’. A reply such as ‘It’s four o'clock and five sixths’ or ‘It’s a sixth of an hour to five’ or ‘It’s five less ten’ would not count as idiomatic. To break the idiomaticity convention is to speak unnaturally. We may do so for special effect, but the special effects produced by such unidiomatic wordings are what prove the rule. This account of the idiomaticity convention is not very satisfactory but it will have to do for the time being.

While a grammar will give information about pronunciation and how to form grammatical sentences, it will not describe the kinds of things that members of the language community say or how they say them. Once these limitations of grammars are understood, however, language learners and translators are left with the question: Where do you find a systematic account of how people say things in a particular language? The short answer is, nowhere. In dictionaries and pedagogical grammars one can often find lists of idioms and anecdotal remarks on what to say in particular contexts but nothing more systematic. Which brings me to the question: What would be entailed in such an account ? Put another way, if the knowledge needed to do idiomatic translation were made explicit what would it look like?

I will approach these questions by looking at the task of translating, into English, discourse in Kalam, a language spoken by some 15,000 people living around the junction of the Bismarck and Schrader Ranges, on the northern fringes of the central Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Ralph Bulmer maintained that, of all the foreign languages he had had close dealings with (these included another New Guinea Highlands language, Enga, and Saami, or Lappish), discourse in Kalam was consistently the hardest to translate. That has also been my experience. Bulmer was speaking not of discourse on subjects that are arcane or culture-specific but on topics and domains of experience that are more or less universal. However, I do not wish to suggest that Kalam-English translation is unique; it is merely a striking instance of a general phenomenon. Because it is striking it draws attention to certain problematic and pervasive features of language structure and language use, features that have no natural place in conventional grammars and dictionaries. Once these elements are isolated, and once we have a terminology for talking about them, it becomes fairly easy to see what it is that makes Kalam-English translation hard.

A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONIn my youth I studied grammar books and dictionaries for some time before realising that, beyond giving

rules of pronunciation and sentence formation, it is not their job to tell the reader how to speak or write a language idiomatically. A training in linguistics had led me to think that in order to do these things one needed, above all, to gain a good command of the three components that descriptive linguists pay most attention to: the lexicon, the grammar and the sound system. Each component provides different ingredients essential for this purpose. The lexicon is culture-specific and finite. It lists just those pairings of concepts and forms (morphemes or irregular expressions) that are arbitrary and standardised in the speech community or in one of its subgroups. Such a set of concepts naturally will reflect those subject-matters, customs and beliefs that have currency in the speech community.

By contrast, the grammar is (apart from its capacity to draw on particular lexemes) wholly or almost wholly independent of any particular subject-matter or belief system. In the sight of Grammar, all sentences are equal, whether they be sensible or nonsensical, familiar or novel, polite or vulgar. All that she requires of the strings is that they be grammatical.

George Grace (1981, 1987) has referred to the longstanding idea that a language description should consist principally of an account of grammar, lexicon and sound system as the ‘grammar-lexicon’ model of language. The model has, obviously, been extremely productive - scholars have been producing useful grammar-lexicon descriptions for centuries. So longstanding has been this practice, and so dominant in the field of linguistic analysis, that it leads us to think of languages as consisting only of a grammar and a lexicon. Grace suggests that acceptance of grammar-lexicon descriptions as specifying the key ingredients of languages underlies an idea that seems to be quite widely held by linguists and which he terms the ‘intertranslatability postulate’. This is the idea that all languages are fully intertranslatable, that anything that can be said at all can (in principle) be said in any language.

It is grammar, chiefly, that is thought to give this freedom and power to language users. As far as linguistic machinery is concerned, the chief constraints on saying new things, and therefore the chief difficulties of translating between two languages associated with different cultures, are lexical. Grammar enables us to escape from the limitations of a finite and culture-specific vocabulary by means of paraphrase. If speakers of language X have not previously talked about a certain subject-matter, and do not have words for

434 Andrew Pawley

certain concepts needed in such discourse, the grammar of X permits them to remedy the lack by circumlocution. An ad hoc description of the concept can be formulated by combining familar lexical and grammatical elements. Proponents of the intertranslatability postulate would not claim that econom ical translation is always possible. The description of an unfamiliar concept may in some cases be extremely long- winded, with a lot of background knowledge having to be provided, but that is a matter of economy rather than expressive power.

However, such a defence of the intertranslatability hypothesis rests on two kinds of confusion. First, it confuses translation with explanation and encyclopaedic description. Anyone with experience of translating between languages associated with very different cultures knows that accurate translation is sometimes impossible for all practical purposes. Indeed, it is often impossible to translate specialised genres in the same language. That is is to say, one cannot take a piece of discourse about a specialised subject matter in language X (say a description of a baseball game or a treatise on autosegmental phonology) to speakers of X unfamilar with that subject matter. When you have virtually to write a textbook on a subject in order to interpret a single sentence about it to an outsider, you are no longer translating.

The second confusion has to do with the source and target of translation. Although we customarily speak of ‘translating languages’ this locution is misleading. Translation is something that language users do with particular ideas expressed by particular texts. The job of a translator can be defined roughly as taking the message or idea that someone has expressed in language A and rendering the message in language B in a way that speakers of B will understand readily. Successful translation of any spoken or written text normally entails at least the following: (i) scanning the source text and its context, (ii) correctly working out the meaning and purpose intended by the author, (iii) constructing an equivalent text in the target language, equivalent in that it (iv) preserves the meaning more or less exactly, and (v) is readily intelligible to speakers of the target language or style.

ON KALAM TO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONNow let us turn to Kalam and the question: What makes Kalam/English translation hard?First, two brief Kalam texts: the title and subtitle of the second book by Saem Majnep and Ralph Bulmer,

Animals the Ancestors Hunted. The main chapters of this book were tape recorded and transcribed in Kalam by Saem and later translated into English by Bulmer.3

The main title is:

(1) aps- basd skop kmn ak pak nbelgpalancestress ancestor group:of:people game:mammal the kill they:used:to:eat

Bulmer’s translation of Majnep’s title nicely illustrates the problems posed by the non-correspondence of lexical categories. The principal constituents in (1) are aps-basd skop ‘the ancestors’, kmn ak ‘the game mammals’ and pak nbelgpal ‘they used to kill and eat’. Given these constituents and given the knowledge that in Kalam the conventional word order in the clause is SXV (where S is the subject, V is the verb, and X stands for complements of the verb other than subject) we can come fairly easily to the following translation :

(i) ‘The game mammals the ancestors used to kill and eat’.Bulmer’s translation is much freer and sacrifices a good deal of detail:

(ii) ‘Animals the ancestors hunted’.Translation (ii) was preferred, as the book’s title, because it is considerably shorter than (i) and uses words

and concepts that are entirely familiar to native speakers of English. By contrast, (i) seeks to preserve two Kalam concepts that have no exact equivalents in everyday English. One is the term kmn, which refers to the larger marsupials and rodents that the Kalam prize as game. ‘Wild mammals’ is too technical; English speakers don’t ‘hunt wild mammals’. ‘Wild animals’ is not an accurate rendering because such animals as lizards, snakes and frogs, and some small marsupials, are not kmn. ‘Game’ is too broad, because it includes birds. Besides, the book is about living animals, not just animals as game. In several technical papers Bulmer translates kmn as ‘game mammals’, but in the title he settles for plain ‘animals’. Because the last word of (ii) is ‘hunted’, he presumably felt he could dispense with the modifier ‘game’.

However, Kalam has no verb ‘to hunt’. ‘Hunted’ in (ii) is a very free translation of pak fib, accurately translated in (i) as ‘kill and eat’. There is a rough match in that Kalam speakers say ‘kill and eat X’ in many discourse contexts where an English speaker would use a single verb such as ‘hunt X’. In fact, Kalam speakers often use an even longer string of verbs to refer in a general way to hunting events. I will give examples later.

Finally, notice that in (ii) Bulmer translated a Kalam past habitual by a simple past even though English has a past habitual. Why? I suspect it was because the English simple past covers both punctual and habitual acts, and the simple past here is shorter and at least as natural.

Saying Things in Kalam 435

The subtitle of the book is:

(2) (a)

(b)

ctwe-2

bwkbook

kmn-game:mammal

Ingwill-put

assmall:marsupials:andrrodents

gobt mnab we:do country

maglsek mdeb all it-exists

nbconcerning

okthat

dl,having-got

Kalam Papua New Guinea Kalam Papua New Guinea

(Here and in other multiclause Kalam texts, each main clause is given a letter (a), (b), etc. and is set on a separate line.)

In clause (a) the subject-verb sequence is ct dl, ‘we having got’. The thing got is kmn-as maglsek mdeb nb ok ‘(information) concerning all game mammals and small wild mammals’. In (b) the subject-verb construction is Ing gobt ‘we will put’, the understood object being the information specified in (a).

A fairly faithful translation of (2) is:(i) ‘We two will put in a book the information we have obtained about the game mammals and small

wild mammals that exist in the Kalam area of Papua New Guinea’.Bulmer’s translation is:

(ii) ‘An account of the wild animals of the Kalam area, Papua New Guinea’.(ii) is much more streamlined but we can see that it plays fast and loose with the content of the Kalam text.

The Kalam text, which contains two main clauses (one of these also contains an embedded clause), is reduced to a single noun phrase. Among the many conceptual elements eliminated are all the Kalam verb meanings together with their subjects. The compound lexeme kmn-as ‘game mammals-small marsupials and rodents’ is rendered as ‘wild animals’. What is gained by this distortion is a translation that fits smoothly into the mould of preferred English subtitles: a single noun phrase of the general form NP (prep NP (prep NP)).

Let us move now to a longer and more formidable text. I have chosen the opening section of the original Kalam text of Saem Majnep’s essay in the present volume:

(3) (a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

(i)

(j)

yad mny Reyp Bwlma 28 years mnab -yad Kalam wog ak nb gakI now Ralph Bulmer 28 years country-my Kalam work it such he:did

agngayn.I:will:speak

Tap nb ogok tap ty tap ty ngl,thing such those thing what thing what having-perceived

kneb ameb owep wog waty gep sleeping going coming work fence doing(n.) (n.) (n.) (n.) (n.)

yp>also

am okok kmn nen pak nb tagep yp,go wherever game:mammal for kill eat goingrabout also

am okokgo wherever

am byn tygo woman what

yakt nen bird for

tywhat

nagshoot

nbeat

tagep yp,going:about also

glhavingrdone

tawpalthey:pay

agl;having:wondered

am nagep pak-ep at go shooting hitting on(n.) (n.)

gok ty ty glthose what what having:done

(k) mdebalthey-live

436 Andrew Pawley

(1) agl\having:wondered

(m) am tap ognap kmn yakt kwbap kwlnok byn -bgo thing some game: bird green-snail: dog-whelk: woman-man

mammal shell shell

penpen neb,each:other giving (n.)

(n) mnab pat okok nb Kaytog, Asay akagcountry far those from Kaironk Asai whether

(o) Kaytog nb Sbay, Kaytog nb Malg,Kaironk from Simbai Kaironk from Maring

(p) tap ty tap ty glthing what thing what having-done

(q) mdebalthey-live

(r) agi,havingrwondered

(s) wog nb ogok am ngwp ak. work such those go he:saw it

All clear? The reader will note that the second sentence contains about 16 clauses, running from (c) to (s), and one has to wait until (s) for an independent verb, one that specifies the person-and-number and the absolute tense of the subject. This length and structure of sentence is fairly typical of Kalam narratives.

Let us now attempt a translation of (3), breaking the text into smaller sense units of two or three clauses at a time. Clauses (a) and (b) are fairly easy:

(3) (a) yad mhy Reyp Bwlma 28 years mnab -yad Kalam wog ak nb gakI now Ralph Bulmer 28 years country-my Kalam work it such he:did

(b) agngayn.I:will:speak

A reasonable free translation is: I’m going to talk about Ralph Bulmer’s 28 years of work in my Kalam country.

(c) and (d) are less straightforward:

(c) Tap nb ogok tap ty tap ty ngl,thing such those thing what thing what having-perceived

(d) kneb ameb owep wog waty gep yp, sleeping going coming work fence doing also(n.) (n.) (n.) (n.) (n.)

tap ty tap ty ‘what thing, what thing’ is a standard expression, meaning roughly ‘various things’, or ‘the usual things’, ngl here might be translated ‘having observed’; (ng- means ‘perceive, be aware, know’), kneb ameb owep wog waty gep is a standard phrase roughly equivalent to ‘everyday activities’, ‘daily life’ or perhaps ‘way of life’, -eb or -ep is a nominalising suffix. A free translation of (c)-(d) is:

(c) He observed the various customs and rituals,(d) the everyday work and activities,

The next two clauses:(e) am okok kmn nen pak nb tagep yp,

go wherever game:mammal for kill eat goingrabout also

Saying Things in Kalam 437

(0 am okok yakt nen hag hb tagep yp,go wherever bird for shoot eat goingrabout also

each contains a variant of a single general formula for talking about hunting which literally translated says ‘walking about going here and there after (animals N) killing (or shooting) and eating them’. The formula is:

(5) am okok N nen V hb tagepgo wherever N-for V eat walking about,(where N names a category of game and V specifies how it is killed)

A free translation of (e)-(f) is:(e) the hunting of game mammals,(f) the hunting of birds,

The next three clauses are:(g) am byn ty ty gl

go woman what what having:done

(h) tawpal theyrpay

0) agl,having:wondered

In (g) the discontinuous phrase byn . . . tawpal, literally ‘buy a wife/buy wives’ is modified by ty ty g-, a standard phrase meaning ‘do the customary things’. The whole clause can be translated ‘the customs followed when buying a wife’ or ‘the customs associated with paying bridewealth’. In (h) the verb ag-, which normally means ‘to speak, make a sound’ but also has the sense of speaking to oneself, formulating one’s thoughts or desires, wondering or being curious. Here agl may be translated ‘having wondered about’ or ‘having been curious about (or interested in)’ (all the activities mentioned in the preceding clauses). A free translation of (g)-(i) is:

(g) the various customs associated with(h) obtaining wives(i) he was curious (about these things);

(j)-0) go together:(j) am hagep pak-ep at gok ty ty gl

go shooting hitting on those what what having:done(n.) (n.)

(k) mdebalthey-live

(1) agl,having:wondered

In (j), am hagep pakep g- ‘go shooting hitting do’ is a standard phrase translatable as ‘go to war’, ‘make war’, or ‘fight (with lethal weapons)’. In (1), m debal ‘they-live’ refers to the manner of existence or way of life specified by the preceding clause. In (1), agl ‘having wondered about’ refers to being interested in the matters previously mentioned. A free translation is:

(j) the customs associated with warfare and other activities(k) in their way of life(1) he was interested in (these things);

Clauses (m)-(q) form a sense unit but let us take (m) first:(m) am tap ognap kmn yakt kwbap kwlnok byn -b

go thing some game: bird green-snail: dog-whelk: woman-manmammal shell shell

penpen neb, each:other giving (n.)

438 Andrew Pawley

The literal sense is ‘People go giving each other things, game mammals (i.e. furs), birds (i.e. plumes), green- snail shells, dog-whelk shells’. Here we see the identification of a high-order category ‘valuable trade goods’ by a standard phrase which lists some of its most typical or salient members. The whole might be freely translated as ‘the trading of game mammal furs, plumes, and shell valuables’ or simply ‘trade in valuables’.

(n) mnab pat okok nb Kaytog, Asay akagcountry far those from Kaironk Asai whether

(0) Kaytog nb Sbay, Kaytog nb Malg,Kaironk from Simbai Kaironk from Maring

(p) tap ty tap ty glthing what thing what having-done

(q) mdebalthey-live

(n) and (o) specify the directions of trade between distant places, such as Kaironk and Asai, from Kaironk to Simbai or to Malg (Maring) while (p) and (q) contain a formula that refers to the various things people do in their lives. The sequence can be translated as follows:

(m) the trading of game mammals, bird’s feathers, greensnail and dog-whelk shells,(n) and the directions of trade such as from Kaironk to the Asai Valley,

and Kaironk to Simbai, Kaironk to the Maring,(p) the various customary activities,(q) (that made up) their way of life

Clauses (r) and (s) conclude the second sentence of Saem’s text:(r) agl;

havingrwondered

(s) wog nb ogok am ngwp ak. work such those go hersaw that

(r) consists of the expression, already encountered in clause (i), referring to Bulmer’s interest in or curiosity about the things previously mentioned. In (s) am ngwp (lit. ‘he went and perceived’) has the sense of going and investigating, studying, finding out. A possible fairly literal translation of (r)-(s) is:

(r) being interested,(s) these were the kinds of activities he studied

The reader may wish to compare the following clause-by-clause translation of (3), which retains something of the flavour of the Kalam original, with the much freer rendition which appears at the beginning of Saem Majnep’s memoir in Part I of this volume.

(4) (a) I now about Ralph Bulmer’s 28 years of work in my Kalam country(b) I’m going to talk.(c) He observed the various customs and rituals,(d) the everyday work and activities,(e) the hunting of game mammals,(f) the hunting of birds,(g) the various customs associated with(h) obtaining wives(1) he was curious about (these things);(j) the customs associated with warfare and other activities(k) in their way of life(1) he was interested in (these things);(m) the trading of game mammals, bird’s feathers, greensnail and dog-whelk shells,(n) and the directions of trade, such as from Kaironk to the Asai Valley,(o) and Kaironk to Simbai, Kaironk to the Maring,(p) the various customary activities,(q) (that made up) their way of life(r) interested him,(s) and these were the things he studied.

Saying Things in Kalam 439

ON THE SYSTEMATICS OF SAYING THINGS,OR, HOW TO TALK ABOUT HUNTING IN KALAMPlainly, to make sense of Kalam discourse it is not enough to know the grammar and the words. One

needs to know the larger-than-word packages that are the stuff of discourse, i.e. the kinds of subjects that people talk about, the ways of structuring or formulating discourse about these subjects, the particular details that are picked out for mention. In other words, one needs to know the conceptual schemas and the locutions for expressing these schemas that are standard or conventional in the language community.

While conventional expressions of the kind illustrated in (3) might be called ‘idioms’, this label is not a satisfactory one. A common sense of ‘idiom’ is an irregular pairing of form and meaning, an expression whose meaning is not deducible from its parts. Such idioms occur in Kalam but most standard expressions are well-formed, and mean just what they say. This is true even of the compound nominals, in which two, three, or four nouns together form a lexeme or conventional phrase denoting a genetic category which in most cases is the sum of all the more specific categories named in it, e.g. byn-b people (= women-men), n-pan ‘children’ (= son-daughter), nwnay-nwmam ‘siblings’ (= sister-brother), aps-basd ‘grandparents, ancestors’ (= grandmother-grandfather), kaj-kayn-kobty ‘large animals’ (= pig-dog-cassowary), km n-yakt-kwbap- kwlnok ‘trade valuables’ (= game mammals-birds-greensnail shells-dogwhelk shells). Most such compounds are no more idioms than such English phrases as ‘men and women’, ‘boys and girls’, ‘brothers and sisters’, or ‘men, women and children’. It is more useful to speak of them as ‘formulaic expressions’.

There are, however, many kinds of formulaic expressions. A basic distinction may be drawn between Fixed formulas and productive formulas. Fixed formulas have invariant wording, e.g. No sooner said than done\, a stitch in time saves nine', How do you pleadP. Productive formulas, or formulaic constructions, contain a conceptual and structural core which is constant while allowing certain elements to vary, e.g. I f it’s good enough fo r NPi (to S), it’s good enough (for NPj). Productive formulas range from those that show only a little productivity, say a limited choice in one or two elements, to those that are highly productive. At the most productive end of the scale are formulaic constructions, which consist largely of constituents with variable content. An example is

(6) the ADJ -er (NP VP) the ADJ -er (NP VP)

This formula generates a number of individual expressions that have become fixed, e.g. the sooner the better and the bigger they are the harder they fa ll, as well as many generating countless expressions which contain some novel material, or which may be varied, such as the longer she stayed there the better she liked it. Another productive formula is the time-telling formula

(7) (the time be-TENSE) M to!past H,

where M stands for an expression specifying minutes and H for the hour.It is convenient to distinguish the conceptual from the formal or expressive half of a formula. For example,

both I’m p leased to meet you and I’m delighted to make your acquaintance share a common conceptual structure at a certain level of abstraction. At that level, they are different ways of saying the same thing.

With these bits of analytic baggage in hand, let us now take a closer look at how the Kalam talk about one large class of events: those in which (according to the speaker) there is a wilful transitive act, one in which some being deliberately does something to something else.

In reporting such events Kalam speakers usually give information about associated activities, including preconditions and outcomes, that an English speaker would omit. A well-formed report of a wilful transitive act should say (1) whether the actor was already at the scene or had to go there to perform the act, (2) what he did there, (3) whether he stayed there after doing it or went elsewhere, (4) whether the affected object was left or carried off, and (5) what he did with the object ultimately. Elements (3) and (4) are invariably treated as a unit, so the basic or general formula can be reduced to four main constitutents, summarised in (8):

(8) General formula for describing wilful transitive events1 2 3 4ACTOR’S ACTION TRANSPORT FATE OFMOVEMENT OF AFFECTED AFFECTED

OBJECT OBJECT

For example, when the Kalam speak of fetching water or firewood or gathering pandanus nuts, or making an earh oven, they conventionally specify all these elements.

In addition to this general formula, there are many specialised variants - schemas for describing particular types of wilful actions. Saem’s accounts of hunting activities provide a rich source of examples. The Kalam

440 Andrew Pawley

do not have a simple verb corresponding to ‘hunt’ or ‘go hunting’. The verbs used vary according to the nature of the search and capture procedures. The most abbreviated formula in narratives about hunting is that used in (1) above: ‘kill and eat animals’. More commonly, however, we find a longer locution which contains the elements specified in (9).

(9) General formula for hunting events1 2 3 4 5 6 7DIRECTION ANIMAL (SEARCH) FIND CAPTURE (CARRY COME) (BAKE) (EAT)

VERB NAME

This formula has a fixed order of major constituents but almost all of these can have various specific exponents. Let us look first at the conceptual structure. Constituent 1 tells whether the actor was already at the scene of the hunting activities or whether he had to travel to get there. 2 names the kind of animal sought.3 and 4 are optional constituents, describing the search and find stages of the hunt. 5 refers to the capture or killing of the game. 6-8 are optional but usually present. They state that after capture, the game is brought back to the camping place, where it is baked in an earth oven and eaten.

When we speak of them in this way such Kalam formulas seem quite complex. However, even when expressed by multi-clause constructions, they are not cumbersome to say. The Kalam streamline them. One important streamlining device when describing a series of actions carried out by the same actor(s) is the serial verb construction. In this a number of verb stems, up to 10 or so, are strung together, with little or no intervening material.4 When such serial verb constructions are standard locutions we might say they are lexicalised, i.e. they have become lexemes or elements in the lexicon.5

In the general hunting formula, constituent 1 is usually expressed by the verb am ‘go’ or tag- ‘travel, walk about’. If the hunters are already at the scene, it may be expressed by a phrase containing m d ‘stay, be’ or may be left unexpressed. Constituent 2 usually consists of the name of the animal hunted (if not already given in the discourse) and one of the two verbs: pyow ‘search (generic)’ or talk ‘search for (game)’. 3 is usually ng-y ‘having seen, having perceived’. 4 is often pak- ‘kill, strike’, but may be another expression specifying mode of capture. 5 is usually d ap ‘get come’ or dad ap ‘carry come’, i.e. bring the game to the ritual cooking place, where it must be baked with appropriate magic. 6 is either ad ‘bake’ or some other cooking phrase, such as kab agl- ‘make an earth oven’. In 7 the verb is always fib- ‘eat’.

The verbs from 3-7 may occur as a series without any intervening (non-verbal) constituents, or other material may intervene in certain positions. I have assigned each verb carrying a tense suffix to a separate clause. Bare verb stems are assigned to the same clause as the following tensed verb.

Some examples follow, all taken from chapter 1 of Animals the Ancestors Hunted.

(10) (a) . . . basd yes ogok mdlancestor distant those having-existed

(b) kty am kmn pak dad apithey go game:mammal kill carry having-come

(c) nb okok ad nbelgpal.so thereabouts bake they-used-to-eat

. . . ‘certain ancestors living there used to kill game and cook and eat it in places around there’.

(11) (a) byn -b ak ned mdl sblam mey ognl,man-woman that first having-existed cordyline aforementioned those

(b) kmn pak dad apigame:mammal kill carry having-come

(c) ad fibl katp sey ognl.....bake having-eaten house old:site those

‘...the cordyline enclosures where the first people had their house sites, where they cooked and ate the animals they hunted,...’

Notice that in both (10) and (11) the sequence kmn pak dad api ad hbl recurs. We find it again and again in Saem’s narrative.

Saying Things in Kalam 441

(12) (a) . . . mnab ak I glland that form having-occurred

(b) mdek,it-lived

(v.)

(C) kmn ak pakgame:mammal that kill

(d) ty ty glwhat what having-done

(e) adhaving-baked

(0 hbek,...they-ate

api,

‘When that land came into existence, people hunted game mammals and cooked and ate them,...’

What is most striking is that, even when Saem is focusing on one particular activity in the hunting sequence, e.g. cooking the animals, or cooking and eating them, as in (10), (11) and (12), he mentions all the constituents and in the same order as when he is speaking generally about the whole sequence. One part of the sequence of activities is highlighted, not by changing the word order or by omitting any of the constituent acts, but by giving more information about the focused act, by elaborating the description. In (13), for example, the narrator is mainly concerned to identify the type of cordyline that is used when baking game mammals in earth ovens; even so he mentions the killing and carrying of the game that must precede the cooking, and the eating that follows it.

(13) (a) . . . nwmwd-ney. kmn sblam yb ak meycross-cousin-his gameimammal cordyline true that aforementioned

(b) kmn ak pak dad apigame:mammal that kill carry having-come

(c) ad hbal.bake they-eat

‘...the cross-cousin (close relative) of the real game mammal cordyline, the one used in ovens when game mammals, after being killed and brought there, are cooked and eaten’.

Example (14) specifies even more fully the sequence of actions on hunting forays: GO, WALK ABOUT, SLEEP, KILL, GET, COME (TO CAMPSITE), BAKE, EAT, COME (BACK HOME).

(14) (a) Mey basd skop yes ogok a m . . . tagi,aforementioned ancestor group distant those go . . . travekabout

(b) sblam mgan nb ak knl cordyline enclosure thus that having-slept

(c) kmn pak d ap ad hbl apelgpal.game: mam mai hit get come bake having-eaten they-used-to-come

‘This was the basis on which our forefathers had their camp-sites in these same cordyline enclosures when they were hunting game mammals’.

A more literal translation is: ‘When our forefathers went to (the forest) and went about (looking for game), they used to sleep in these same cordyline enclosures and, after killing and bringing game mammals there to cook and eat they used to come (home)’.

These texts illustrate a schema for talking about hunting game mammals in general. When the subject is hunting a particular kind of animal, other formulas are used which refer to the particular methods of search and capture.

442 Andrew Pawley

(15) Game mammals taken in trees:GO TREE CLIMB ANIMAL:NAME HAVING-SEEN KILL CARRY HAVING-COME BAKE EAT

(16) Game mammals hunted by ground-search:GO ANIMAL:NAME SEARCH WALK:ABOUT HAVING-SEEN KILL CARRY HAVING-COMEBAKE EAT

(17) Game taken in snares:GO ANIMAL:NAME SNARE THEY-HAVING SET IT-HAVING-CAUGHT KILL CARRYHAVING-COME BAKE EAT

For frogs, which are unimportant animals, not requiring to be brought back to a ritual cooking place before eating, there is a simple formula:

(18) Catching frogsGO FROG SEARCH HAVING-SEEN EAT

If you want to speak Kalam even passably well you need to know (among other things) a considerable number of schemas of this kind, covering various subject matters or fields of discourse. It is the same with any language, I believe.

WHY IS KALAM-ENGLISH TRANSLATION HARD?It is time to come back to the question: Why is translation between Kalam and English hard? Broadly, our

answer is that it is mainly because speakers of the two languages are not in the habit o f saying the same things. Put another way, the two languages have developed different conceptual formulas, different ways of talking about the world.

If, when talking about a given subject matter, Kalam and English speakers consistently expressed the same ideas, though in rather different form, translation would be straightforward. The translator would need to know just a single set of concepts and conceptual formulas (shared by the languages) plus two sets of expression codes (one for each language). His task, when translating, would be (a) to work out what the speaker or write meant when he said X, and (b) to find a good matching expression for X in the target language.

The trouble is that such good equivalents sometimes do not exist. Even when they talk about the same general subject matter, e.g. hunting, Kalam and English speakers tend to say different things. In such cases, one can say that speakers of the two languages live in (partly) different conceptual worlds. The translator then has this choice. Either he can give a fairly literal rendering which preserves the conceptual structure of the original utterance but is hard for speakers of the target language to comprehend, or he can, as Bulmer did in (1) and (2), attempt a free translation which loses some of the information but gets some of the meaning across in terms easily intelligible to the audience. It is this latter type, pragmatic translation, which people prefer for most purposes.

Competence in translation, I suggest, rests heavily on the ability to recognise and match conceptual formulas and their standard wordings. In the case of translation between codes (languages or genres) which are isomorphic, e.g. the translation from French into English of a book on geology, architecture or tennis will be relatively straightforward because for each of these fields both languages talk about these fields in similar ways; they share the same conceptual vocabulary. In the case of translation between codes (languages or genres) belonging to two very different cultures, however, the burden on the translator is heavier. Given an utterance in A, the translator simply may not be able to find a way of saying the same thing in B. He may, by exercising considerable ingenuity, come up with a passable approximation, or or he may simply throw up his hands. Consider the difficulty of translating a technical description of a cricket match into French. Indeed, the struggle in the present paper to isolate and name the things that make Kalam-English translation underlines the point that you cannot talk about something until you have devised conventional ways of thinking and talking about it.

SOME WIDER IMPLICATIONSLet me conclude with a few words about the general significance of this case study.Theoretical linguists sometimes complain that anthropological linguistics does no more than compile

superficial descriptions of more and more languages, without any clear theoretical purpose. We will, they suggest, learn more about how human language works and how it relates to the mind, by deeper and deeper study of a few well-known languages.

Saying Things in Kalam 443

Well, language descriptions serve other purposes at least as important as theory-testing. But anthropological linguistics surely can contribute much to knowledge of what is variable and constant across languages, to the typological comparisons that are the basis of most theoretical work. This sketch of Kalam ways of saying things has been brief and superficial but it is not without theoretical purpose. It is intended to draw attention to a little-studied part of language: the existence of productive systems of conventions for talking about particular subject matters, of what might be termed subject m atter codes. The discussion has focused on one component of subject matters, namely, productive formulas for reporting events in Kalam.

To incorporate productive formulas into language descriptions is not merely to add an extra component to grammar-lexicon descriptions. It calls for a different view of what a language is and what it is fo r than grammarians have generally taken. Consider the following points.(a) Linguists are used to thinking of discourse as being constructed from a lexicon, a grammar and a phonology. The lexicon is fixed and closely intertwined with particular cultural and social institutions. The grammar is generative and largely independent of culture. Formulas don’t fit neatly into this pattern. Many formulas are generative, but they are also culture-specific.(b) We are used to thinking of conventional concepts as meanings expressed by words. Conceptual formulas, however, are more complex - sometimes taking a clause or several clauses to express. In all languages, I suspect, the number of phrase and clause-sized formulas far exceeds the number of words.(c) Why do people need speech formulas, as well as words and grammar? To talk and think economically and fluently about recurrent and complex subject matters.(d) Although language users know conceptual formulas, and their expression forms, does this mean that the formulas are in the language? Are they not just features of language use, byproducts of grammar and culture? Are they not just things that people are in the habit of saying because they reflect the way of life or worldview of the speech community? The culture or worldview might change radically, and the formulas associated with it might disappear, but does this mean that the language, the basic code, has changed?

That depends on how narrowly or broadly you wish to define language - a matter of terminology rather than substance. If you want to treat the formulas used by a speech community as part of the content and structure of its language, you must allow that all sentences of the languages are not equal and that all conceptual structures are not equal. Some have privileged status, namely those that are common usages, the familiar ways of expressing familiar ideas.

A method for analysing subject matter codes is likely to interest scholars in a range of disciplines concerned with the human condition. The problem is to learn how to tackle this little-explored territory. Papuan languages have recently begun to receive attention from typologists for their syntactic characteristics. What of their subject matter codes, their productive conceptual formulas, their ways of talking about the world? Here is a rich field for comparative study.

NOTES

1. My fieldwork on Kalam during the 1960s and 70s was supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Auckland University Research Grants Committee, the University of Papua New Guinea and the Australian National University.

2. Here I leave aside the notorious problem of defining ‘meaning’ except to note that there are different levels of meaning, e.g. the pragmatic force of an utterance may differ from its literal meaning.

3. A phonemic orthography for Kalam was devised in the 1960s and a modified form of this is coming into use by the people as they begin to write in Kalam. The phonemic orthography will be used here. There are four stops /b, d, j, g/, pronounced with homorganic nasal onset; initially and medially the usual allophones are [mb, nd, nj, ng], and finally [mp, ny, nc, rjk]. There are four oral obstruents /p, t, c, k/, voiceless in initial position as [$, t, c, k], voiced and fricativised in medial position [p, r, j, y]; final /p/ may be either [b] or [p]; otherwise final allophones are as for initial position. There are four nasals /m, n, fl, rj]; and a lateral /1/ which is flapped and retroflexed. /w/ and /y/ pronounced as [w] and [y] before a vowel and in initial position, as [u] and [i] between consonants and as [uw] and [iy] finally. There are three pure vowels /a, e, o/.All consonants are articulated with a predictable vocalic release when standing alone in a word or when followed by another consonant in a word. The vocalic release is usually a short high central [i], e.g. nrjbyn “I perceived’ is [nigimbin], kmn ‘game mammal’ is [kiminj, or a mid-central [a] after a lone consonant, e.g. b ‘man’ is [mba], m ‘taro’ is [ma]. However the vocalic colouring of the release shows considerable variation according to the adjacent consonants, e.g. b-yad ‘my (kins)man’ is [mbiyant], m-wog ‘taro garden’ is [muworjk] and m-yob ‘big taro’ is [miyomp].

4. An extended analysis of Kalam serial constructions is given in Lane (1991). See also Pawley (1987) for discussion of Kalam conventions for reporting events and Pawley (1991) for a treatment of ‘subject matter codes’.

5. By doing so, however, we must extend the notions ‘lexeme’ and ‘lexicon’ in a way that goes against the grain of structural linguistics. The fact is that most Kalam formulas are well-formed strings, conforming in structure and

444 Andrew Pawley

meaning to the rules of grammar. To grant certain well-formed strings lexeme status just because they are frequently used is, I believe, objectionable to grammarians on several grounds:(i) Economy. Some strings now must be specified twice, once generated by the grammar, once listed in the lexicon.(ii) Vagueness. How frequently must a well-formed string be used to qualify it for lexeme status?(iii) Structural boundaries. Grammar and lexicon have complementary functions, one being generative, the other being a list of primitive elements. This step breaks down the clear division of labour between them, because many formulas are productive.(iv) Loss of autonomy. The generative component of language should be independent of any particular culture. Formulas belong to the domain of language use, not to language structure.Objections (i-iii) simply reflect one possible view of the nature and boundary of the lexicon. There is no good evidence that language users organise their linguistic knowledge in terms of the kinds of economies and structural boundaries beloved of grammarians. However, in many respects productive formulas do have a different character from typical lexemes, and so I prefer not to call them lexemes but formulas, and to speak of the formulaic component of a language-culture system. Objection (iv) is a terminological quibble. It reflects an arbitrary preference to define language structure narrowly, so as to exclude conventions that reflect the common usages and worldview of language users.

REFERENCES

GRACE, George, 1981. An Essay on Language. Columbia, S.C., Hornbeam Press.-----------, 1987. The Linguistic Construction of Reality. London, Croom Helm.LANE, Jonathan, 1991. Kalam Serial Verb Constructions in Kalam. MA thesis, Department of Anthropology,

University of Auckland.MAJNEP, Ian Saem, and Ralph BULMER, in preparation. Animals the Ancestors Hunted: An Account of the Wild

Mammals of the Kalam Area, Papua New Guinea. Based on English Text of Kalam Hunting Traditions. Working Papers I-XII. University of Auckland, Department of Anthropology Working Papers.

PAWLEY, Andrew, 1987. Encoding Events in Kalam and English: Different Logics for Reporting Experience, in Russell S. Tomlin (ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 329-60.

-----------, 1991. How to Talk Cricket: on Linguistic Competence in a Subject Matter, in Robert Blust (ed.) Currentsin Pacific Linguistics: Essays on Austronesian Languages and Ethnolinguistics in Honour of George W. Grace. Canberra, Pacific Linguisics, C-117. pp. 339-68.

AUSTRONESIAN CLASSIFICATION AND THE CHOICE OF ENDEAVOUR

Wendy Pond Stout Research Centre, Wellington

E te iwi o te Tai Tokerau whānui, tēnā koutou katoa. E tuku atu nei i aku mihi kia koutou i āwhina mai i ngā mahi whakaatu i ngā ingoa Māori mo āhua ngārara katoa o tenei rohe.

Me mihi kau ake ahau i tenei wā ki ēnei kaumātua kua whetūrangitia na rātou tonu i timata ngā mahi nō tēnei kaupapa whakaatu i ingoa Maori o ngā ngārara mō te rohe o te Tai Tokerau: kia Tauwhitu Papa, kia Rapata Tucker, rāua ko tona hoa wahine kia Riripeti, kia Vivian Gregory, kia Tureiti Whetoi Pomare, kia Ned Nathan, kia Frederick Augustus Conrad, kia Tuhi Maihi, kia Rewi Pereri Wiki, kia Te Rongomau Kaka nō tona hoa wahine kia Te Kiu, kia Ngarongoa (Nga Ihaia) Rewiti, me Hemowai Brown. E kui mā, e kara mā, kei te mau mahara tonu kia koutou: moe mai katoa i roto i te ariki.

I have been working in Northland, New Zealand, recording the Māori names of insects and terrestrial arthropods. My collection of specimens was prepared by the Auckland branch of the Entomological Society. The elders remarked on the craftsmanship and manual dexterity evident in the mounting of the specimens, and they expressed appreciation of the contribution by members of the Society to giving Māori names scientific definition. The final referees of the work are the tribal councils of Northland.

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