|
Article Excerpt
But the mind attempts to contrive a principle of order and
regularity into certain parts of the mass of signs, and this is the role of relative motivation. (Ferdinand de Saussure 1974:133) Il y a trop de sens incertains et meme de apparentes contradictions. Les mysteres abondent encore en Mekeo! (From the title page of the Desnoes Mekeo-French Dictionary)
Much of the recent ethnographic literature dealing with Mekeo culture and beliefs has been concerned with what may be called key words or "key cultural concepts" (a term introduced by Wierzbicka 1997; compare Feinberg 2002, on "themes" in Oceanic culture). (1) A number of important claims made by ethnographers of Mekeo culture, particularly Mosko (1985), Stephen (1995, 1996a 1996b) and Bergendorff (1996, 2003), hinge on the interpretation and definition of key terms, or concepts. In 1995, Stephen called for "literal translations" of key words, in particular lopia and ungaunga, (2) terms traditionally glossed as "chief' (or "peace chief') and "sorcerer" (e.g. Seligman 1910; Hau'ofa 1971, 1981; Mosko 1985). She suggested translations of her own ("man of kindness" and "man of sorrow," respectively) that have since gained some currency. However, many linguists are skeptical about the possibility of literal translation. Wierzbicka (1997, etc.) would argue that there is, by definition, no such thing as a literal translation of a key cultural concept. Following Saussure, other linguists also see the value of a term as a function of its place in a linguistic system; ad hoc glosses can never capture this precise value. In response to such difficulties, Wierzbicka developed a restricted semantic metalanguage aimed at analysing cultural concepts into sets of micro-propositions meant to encapsulate both semantic and pragmatic meanings. Linguists with a specialisation in translation nowadays generally agree that the concept of literal translations is a theoretical and pragmatic cul-de-sac. (3)
Meanwhile, however, Stephen's project has touched closely upon a topic--the nature of chiefly authority among the Mekeo--that has been the subject of considerable anthropological debate since at least the 1980s (see Hau'ofa 1981 and Mosko 1985; Stephen 1996, 1999 and Mosko 1997; Bergendorff 1996 and Mosko 1998). (4) This is a debate with implications for discussions of chiefly authority throughout the New Guinea area (Hau'ofa 1981 and Mosko 1985 both end their detailed depictions of Mekeo society and culture with discussions of chieftainship in comparable New Guinea societies, such as the Tikopia, the Wogeo, and the Trobriand Islanders). Indeed, while aspects of Mekeo chieftainship contrast with similar institutions in other New Guinea societies--e.g. the emphasis on seniority of birth, the public partnership of chiefs with sorcerers, a competition for power based on mystical rather than material goods--it is possible that its roots are still to be found in as yet unwritten ethnographies of peoples of the Purari and Orokolo Rivers, Eleman societies of Gulf Province, and mountain peoples such as the Kuni, Fuyughe, Tauade, and Kunimaipa.
Stephen's use of phrases like "literal translation" (Stephen 1995) and "literal rendering" (Stephen 1999) implies the existence of 'translation equivalents' for individual words and phrases, but in translation theory this is an extremely controversial notion. Literal translation (also referred to as direct translation) attempts to adhere to the denotative meaning, as well as the grammatical form and word order, of words and phrases in a source language--so far as the target language allows. Nowadays, expert translators attempt to achieve "dynamic equivalence" or "motivated formal equivalence", aiming to identify words and wordings in the target language that will best capture the contextualised meanings of the original. Contextualized meanings are generally made up of both semantic and pragmatic meanings, and are ideally systemic. In the past, anthropologists have bypassed translation problems, to some extent at least, by using English glosses that, while referentially somewhat vague, capture the generality of an analytic concept across cultures. This facilitated comparison and generalization. I suggest below that terms such as "chief" and "magic" and "sorcery" have become sufficiently 'technicalised' to function as useful terms for generalized core meanings, from which any local departures can be noted and interpreted. They function as "non-definitional reference fixing" devices (to borrow Boyd's [1993:493] description of the role played by metaphors in science).
Stephen (1995) based her 'literal' translations on decisions about etymology and cognation, a procedure in line with earlier work in symbolic anthropology (e.g. Gell 1975). To do this, she used a Mekeo-French dictionary compiled largely in the 1930s by Fr. Gustave Desnoes of the Sacred Heart Mission, who based entries on handwritten language notes made over the thirty or forty preceding years by missionary priests of the Sacred Heart mission (Mission du Sacre Ceour, commonly abbreviated as MSC). The Desnoes Mekeo-French dictionary, as it is often referred to, is a very unusual work, and one of immense potential value to ethnography, as well as to lexicography and linguistics, because of the numerous authentic examples made up of transcribed utterances that give insights into the culture and beliefs of the East Mekeo, and very possibly those of the other tribal/dialect groupings. However, many glosses in the dictionary are explicitly based on conjecture and speculation, or are explicitly tentative. They are based on the jottings of some ten individual priests. The work was meant to be no more than a sketch for a future Mekeo dictionary, to be based on much further research, and not a finished product (as is observed in several places, for instance on the title page, dated 1933, in the Preliminary Remarks of Fr Desnoes 1933 and in the Preface by the copyist, Fr Hubert van Lamsweerde 1941).
This dictionary will no doubt continue to be used by anthropologists and historians with an interest in Mekeo culture and culture history, and the present paper is meant as something of an introduction to that remarkable two-volume, 1042-page work. It is my intention to contribute to anthropological discussions by reminding a new generation of anthropologists of the dangers of overinterpretation, emphasized twenty and more years ago by Keesing (1985, 1989) and Brunton (1980), while delineating a conceptual framework for distinguishing between polysemous and homonymous lexemes. This framework draws on Saussure's theory of motivation (Saussure 1974:131-134). I argue that lopia meaning "chief" and lopia meaning "good, goodness" (in the East Mekeo dialect; Stephen 1995:23-26 and passim) are in fact homonyms and that, while the latter is most probably derived from the former, the metaphor it incorporates is dead, or "routinized." I use examples of actual usage to show that the two senses of lopia were and are distinct, and I suggest that Mekeo speakers are for the most part unaware of any sense relation between the two. I adduce historical and comparative evidence as well as synchronic evidence in a not altogether successful attempt to shed some light on the actual etymologies and current meanings of the word forms lopia and ungaunga. The method used builds on findings by Sinclair, Payne and Hernandez (1996), which indicate that the meaning of a word can be reliably determined by examining its immediate verbal environments.
LITERAL MEANINGS AND THE MEKEO WORD FOR "CHIEF"
Stephen (1995) argues that key cultural terms were mistranslated from Mekeo into French and English by Catholic missionaries of the Sacred Heart in the 1880s and 1890s, who chose familiar terms from the anthropological literature of the day. She argues that the same mistaken procedure was also followed by the anthropologist Seligmann (1910), and by early government officers who were stationed in or passed through the Mekeo area. The focus of Stephen's objections was the (mis-)translation of lopia as "chief" and ungaunga as "sorcerer"; she argued not only that these terms had unhelpful and irrelevant connotations (ibid.) but also that--on purely linguistic grounds--the translations were incorrect: (5)
I have come to the conclusion that this long-standing terminology is misleading, making the task of accurate ethnographic description more difficult than necessary, "Chief' implies a functional political role that is largely inappropriate in this cultural context. "Sorcerer" hasa specific anthropological usage (i.e., a person attributed with ritual death-dealing powers.... Furthermore the term has negative connotations of a subtly misleading kind (1987b). (Stephen 1995:23).
Apart from the implicit argument from social structure and the context of culture, Stephen's claims were justified with references to entries in the Desnoes dictionary. Stephen argues the word lopia should be translated more accurately as "man of kindness" (1995:23), (6) and goes on to argue (1995:24) that a better translation of ungaunga would be "man of sorrow". Hau' of a had in fact (1981:190) made remarks that supported her case as regards lopia:
The word lopia, which translates literally as 'good', 'pretty', 'well' and 'properly', is ordinarily used strictly as the word for civilian chiefs. Its application to war chiefs, war magicians, and even to sorcerers, is mainly for the enlightenment of inquisitive outsiders.
Stephen was able to point to an entry in the Mekeo-French dictionary where lopia is glossed as "good, handsome" (i.e. bon, beau) as an adjective, and as "well, properly" (bien, comme il faut) when functioning as an adverbial suffix. Stephen notes that this is the second entry, and that the first entry gives the meaning of lopia as "chief, status or rank of a chief" (chef dignite de chef). Hau'ofa was no doubt relying on his knowledge of common usage. In the 1980s, the term lopia (as well as the more emphatic lopianga) competed with felo and mekia-mitsia as terms of general approbation in use by speakers of East Mekeo and North Mekeo. The term felo represents a nativised borrowing from Roro (where bero, means "straight"; the traditional word for "good" in Roro is namo). In the West Mekeo dialect, lobia competed mainly with belo at that time.
It is necessary to add here that, although the French glosses in the second entry for lopia can be thought to include meanings like "kind," and "kindness," Mekeo does have other words expressing meanings more closely akin to the English notion of "kindness," for example, ngafegnafe and mangupa. Stephen (1995:31) recognizes this and cites Mekeo elders who stress that ngafegnafe is "one of the most important virtues" of a peace chief. Desnoes gives the meaning of ngafengafe as "gentleness, amiability, affability etc.; generosity" (douceur, amabilite, affabilite, etc.; generosite); as an adjective, the meaning is "gentle, kind, friendly, affable, generous" (doux, gentil, aimable, affable, genereux); he glosses the verb ngafe as "be generous, good to someone, do good to him; be gentle/kind to someone" (etre genereux, bon envers qq'un, lui faire du bien; etre doux envers qq'un.). It is hard to see how, in the light of the above, Stephen can claim that lopia means--simply and predominantly--"kindness".
The analysis (Table 1) of Mekeo words for "chief" and "good" in historical-comparative perspective further complicates any such straightforward equation. The initial [1] of lopia represents a relatively rare phoneme in East Mekeo. Lynch (1978 1983) established that the word-initial [1] in Motu and East Mekeo had accreted to certain words beginning with a vowel (especially an initial a-, but also initial o-). Taken with the evidence of Roro and Gabadi, where "chief" is ovia, there are some grounds for reconstructing a Peripheral Papuan Tip (7) proto-term *ovia rather than *lovia "chief" (cf. Ross 1988:203).
FALSE ETYMOLOGIES AND SPURIOUS THEORIES
A false etymology is a false belief about the historical origins of a word form; such a belief is provably incorrect from the perspective of historical linguistics. False etymologies usually arise when a chance phonetic resemblance between two words suggests a semantic relation. We can say that an arbitrary or unmotivated word form has been reinterpreted as a motivated one. Speakers of a language have a tendency to look for familiar meanings in unfamiliar words (e.g. borrowed words or words that are "semantically obscure"; Bloomfield 1935:423), and often reinterpret these as compound words made up of one or more clearly meaningful elements. The process is assisted when borrowed words are modified to suit the sound system of the borrowing language. In this way, Middle English crevise (from Old French) ultimately became crayfish, and Middle English sham(e)fast (literally "held in shame") became shamefaced (i.e. newly motivated word forms that added novel connnotations to the referential meaning). These "false etymologies" can also be referred to as "folk etymologies," since the spurious meanings preserved in the changed spelling are accepted by the general populace.
When dealing with a language one does not know thoroughly, and one without a literature or historical records, it is easy to see chance phonetic resemblance as evidence of semantic relatedness. This is always a potential trap for the unwary. The nature of the semantic connection that is postulated may depend unconsciously on ethnocentric associations or on a desire to construct, systematize or justify some hypothetical conceptual system. It is particularly easy to misidentify or misinterpret the syllables in a polysyllabic word as distinct lexical or grammatical morphemes. Because of a high degree of homonymy in all Mekeo dialects, caused by limited consonantal inventories, ethnographers have been able to see meaningful associations between chance homphones (or homonyms), almost at will. Even bound grammatical morphemes can be assigned lexical meanings. An incomplete knowledge of the morphemes and words in a language with a very large vocabulary, a small set of phonemes, and a complex morphology, makes misidentification easy. The work of symbolic anthropologists like Gell (1975) have made it seem that the discovery and interpretation of motivated word forms in an unwritten language is unproblematic, but perhaps his interpretations have not yet been challenged because there have been no detailed linguistic descriptions of the Umeda language to date) Tendentious interpretation of words and morphemes has been central to some recent attempts to interpret and theorise Mekeo beliefs, including some of the terms problematised here, and Mosko recently devoted an entire article to a critique of these practices with particular reference to Bergendorff (Mosko 2005). (9)
Bergendorff (2003) has promulgated a number of false etymologies. For example, he decomposes the East Mekeo word lopia "chief' into lo for "fire" and pia for "burned grass" (2003:77):
Here, lopia is lo for fire and pia for burned grass, or land turned into gardens (land-possession), which gives the size of the clan represented by its skin, or fa in the meaning to (be)come big.
As we saw above (Table 1) cognates of East Mekeo lopia are few and far between outside the western part of Central Papua, so it is not yet possible to say whether the word is a compound and if so what its elements are. That said, a comparison of words for "chief" and "fire" (Table 2) in related languages of the region makes...
|
