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Abstract
Speakers of many Trans New Guinea or Papuan languages use a number of reciprocal person-referring expressions. Various examples are found in the Papuan language of Koromu, spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. This paper examines the meanings of Koromu reciprocal expressions that recall shared past experiences, in particular, social category terms connected with coming of age events and spontaneous nicknames created at the time events occur in the course of everyday life. The meanings are explicated in clear simple terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage primes. The explications point to important aspects of social cognition, including identification with significant others based on shared experience and relational concepts of personhood. Although this study points to the possibility of some language endangerment for some meanings, it also indicates the ongoing cultural importance of shared experiences, including commensality, in both rites of passage and everyday life.
Notes
1 While English ‘classmates’ does not have a strong emotive meaning and is not used as a vocative, expressions such as ‘old school tie’ and ‘old boys network’, though often used derogatively, do indicate some older Anglo values relating to shared relationships and experience, such as identification, loyalty and trust.
2 Kesawai 1 is the overall name of a group of small settlements, near the Kohu River and the Ramu highway north of the Ramu River. Kesawai 2 is a neighbouring group of settlements near the Pakaia River to the East.
3 The explication for the semantic molecule ‘men’ includes both ‘children’ and ‘women’ as semantic molecules (Goddard & Wierzbicka Citationin press: 33).
4 Abbreviations: AFF ‘affectionate’, BM ‘boundary marker’ (at the end of a stretch of discourse), DR ‘different referent following’, f ‘female’, GEN ‘genitive’, G/L ‘goal/locative’, IMP ‘imperative’, O ‘object’, p ‘plural’, P ‘possessive’, PRES ‘present tense/aspect marker’, Q ‘question enclitic’, R ‘reciprocal’, s ‘singular’, SR ‘switch referent’.
5 The gloss for phasal or valency-changing verbs in serial verb constructions expresses the meaning that occurs when the word is a main verb. It is written in capitals to indicate the grammaticized use. Ne STAY has ‘stative’ and valency-decreasing uses.
6 Priestley references in the period 1975–1980 are to the Coming of Age and Initiation sections of the Chronological and Topical Files at the dates indicated.
7 Some young girls in Australia have a ‘red tent day’ party with other girls of their own age.
8 For further details on the intricacies of relationships based on coming of age in a Madang language and culture see Lawrence (Citation1984) on the Garia. Note there has been some important social interaction between the Garia and Koromu communities since at least the mid-1970s when I first lived in a Koromu-speaking community.
9 The importance of thinking in the development of children is also indicated by the combination of the verb urunu ‘think’ with the phasal (aspectual) perfective verb here PUT to mean roughly, ‘(s)he has thoughts now/can think now’ used to describe the thinking of small children of about three years of age.
10 Kinship nouns have obligatory person-number marking or they occur as vocatives with the address suffix.
11 Of several different terms for ancestors, asi is used for ‘grandparents’ and ‘grandchildren’, and in variant forms for great-grandparents. These are a subject for deeper semantic research.