[PapuanLanguages] lexical association of sun and moon

[Antoinette Schapper]

Hi Lise,


Thanks, that's really interesting. Is it ok I cite you in pers. comm.? Can I take it that Mountain Arapesh does not have this pattern of a lexical association between sun and moon?


If you have any other interesting lexical associations in Arapesh, I would love to hear about them.


Cheers,


Antoinette


________________________________
From: PapuanLanguages <papuanlanguages-bounces at anu.edu.au> on behalf of Lise Dobrin <lise.dobrin at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2018 11:53 PM
To: Papuan languages discussion list
Subject: Re: [PapuanLanguages] lexical association of sun and moon

Hi Antoinette,

In Coastal Arapesh the sun/moon word is /aun/. If you want to specify which aun you mean, you can say /wab-i-n aun/ or /wah-i-n aun/ -- 'night's orb' (night-POSS-CLASS.AGR) or 'sunlight's orb' (sunlight-POSS-CLASS.AGR). Both /wah/ and /wab/ are independent lexemes with the expected meaning. But you don't need to do the extra disambiguation unless the situation warrants it. There is also a word for 'moonlight' which gets used very frequently, /waɲikeh/. Hope this is helpful!

Take care,
Lise

On Mar 29, 2018, at 11:23 AM, Antoinette Schapper <a_schapper at hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Papuanists,

I am currently looking at the lexical association between "sun"and "moon" in Papuan languages. This is where the referents "sun" and "moon" are encoded with one and the same lexeme, such as in Bauzi ala 'sun, moon' (Clouse 1997) or Kasua opo 'sun, moon' (Franklin and Voorhoeve 1973). In some cases, this lexeme can be appended with a modifier that disambiguates whether the sun or moon is meant (though the meaning of the modifier in isolation may not be known. For example, Awa has iyo 'sun, moon' (Scott 1978), but to specify moon we also find Awa iyonitanso. In some languages, such specification is obligatory; in others, not.


If anyone knows of languages which display this pattern, I would be greatly appreciate hearing from you at a_schapper at hotmail.com


Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.


Kind regards,


Antoinette Schapper


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Lise M. Dobrin
Associate Professor
Linguistics Program Director
Department of Anthropology
University of Virginia
Brooks Hall 202
PO Box 400120
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4120 USA
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dobrin at virginia.edu <mailto:dobrin at virginia.edu>

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