<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 20 November 2009 - Volume 01<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com">lowlands.list@gmail.com</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:</span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="cgSelectable" title="View all emails from this sender "><span class="fontDarkGray"> ds</span> <<a href="mailto:dstokely@infionline.net">dstokely@infionline.net</a>><br>
</span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: naming things</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Ron - </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This may not be entirely appropriate for posting on L-Lowlands, but I've
got to share it. A friend of mine is planning a trip to Australia and
sent this out to her friends. I'll paste an excerpt below.
You're welcome to use or paste or post it.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">David Stokely </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Elkhart, Indiana </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">from my friend Gloria: </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> In preparation for my trip down to Australia, I’ve been
reading about this land and in one of my readings, I came across this story in
which Wendy, an ethno biologist is working with Old Alex, an elderly Aborigine
of the Pintupi tribe, to put together an English-Pintupi
dictionary.
</span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormalCxSpLast"> Here’s Bruce Chatwin’s
account of this in his book, “Songlines”…</p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpFirst"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
…(Wendy) asked me to come and watch her at work on the dictionary. It was
drizzling. A fine light rain was moving in from the west, and everyone had taken
to their humpies. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
Wendy squatted with Old Alex over a tray of botanical specimens: seed-pods,
dried flowers, leaves and roots. When Wendy handed him a specimen, he would turn
it over, hold it to the light, whisper to himself and then call out its name in
Pintupi. She made him repeat the name a number of times: to be assured of its
phonetic pronunciation. She would then tag the specimen with a label.
</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
There was only one plant Alex didn't know: the dried-up head of a thistle. 'Come
with white man,' he frowned. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'And he's right too,' Wendy turned to me. 'It's a European introduction.'
</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
She thanked him and he walked away, his spears slung over his shoulder.
</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'He's the real thing,' she said, smiling after him. 'But you can't ask too much
in a day - his attention wanders.' </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'I'm supposed to be an ethno botanist,' she laughed. 'But it's all got a bit out
of hand.' </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
Alex was her best informant. You couldn't exhaust his knowledge of plants. He
would reel off the names of species, when and where they would be coming into
flower. He used them as a kind of calendar. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
She had never had a training in linguistics. Yet her work on the dictionary had
given her an interest in the myth of Babel. Why, when Aboriginal life had been
so uniform, had there been 200 languages in Australia? Could you really explain
this in terms of tribalism or isolation? Surely not! She was beginning to wonder
whether language itself might not relate to the distribution of the human
species over the land. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'Sometimes,' she said, 'I'll ask Old Alex to name a plant and he'll answer "No
name", meaning, "The plant doesn't grow in my country.'" </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
Wendy said that, even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first
stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the 'things' of that
particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
The child, at its mother's breast, will toy with the 'thing', talk to it, test
its teeth on it, learn its name, repeat its name - and finally chuck it aside.
</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'We give our children guns and computer games,' Wendy said. 'They gave their
children the land.' </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
She'd then look for an informant who had, as a child, lived where the plant grew
- and find it did have a name after all. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
The 'dry heart' of Australia, she said, was a jigsaw of microclimates, of
different minerals in the soil and different plants and animals. A man raised in
one part of the desert would know its flora and fauna backwards. He knew which
plant attracted game. He knew his water. He knew where there were tubers
underground. In other words, by naming all the 'things' in his territory, he
could always count on survival. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'But if you took him blindfold to another country,' she said, 'he might end up
lost and starving.' 'Because he'd lost his bearings?' 'Yes.'
</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'You're saying that man "makes" his territory by naming the "things" in it?'
</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'Yes, I am!' Her face lit up. </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpMiddle"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
'So the basis for a universal language can never have existed?'</span></p><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;" class="MsoPlainTextCxSpLast"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">
Richard Lee calculated that a Bushman child will be carried a distance of 4,900
miles (7,900 kms) before he begins to walk on his own. Since, during this
rhythmic phase, he will be forever naming the contents of his territory, it is
impossible he will not become a poet…</span></p></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: Lexicon</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Thank you David.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I feel that it </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"></i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">that it fits in with our discussions about lexicon and language genealogy. Occasional exploratory excursions into other territories are quite appropriate if they are likely to enhance our understanding of subject matter that we discuss within the more limited Lowlands scope.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Seattle, USA</span><br></span><br><br>
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