Explorations in Semantic Parallelism Explorations in Semantic Parallelism James J. Fox Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Fox, James J, 1940 - author. Title: Explorations in semantic parallelism / James J. Fox. ISBN: 9781922144690 (paperback) 9781925021066 (ebook) Subjects: Semantics. Parallelism (Linguistics) Dewey Number: 401.43 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Nic Welbourn and layout by ANU Press Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2014 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgments . vii Dedication . xi Comparative Issues 1 . Introduction . 3 2 . Roman Jakobson and the comparative study of parallelism . 19 3 . Trajectories in the continuing study of parallelism . 41 4 . Semantic parallelism in Rotenese ritual language . 91 5 . ‘Our ancestors spoke in pairs’ . 129 6 . On binary categories and primary symbols . 149 7 . Category and complement . 181 8 . Exploring oral formulaic language . 201 The Traditional Oral Canon 9 . Genealogies of the Sun and Moon . 219 10 . Manu Kama’s road, Tepa Nilu’s path . 229 11 . Genealogy and topogeny . 265 12 . Blood-red millet: An origin narrative . 277 13 . Admonitions of the ancestors: Giving voice to the deceased . 283 14 . To the aroma of the name: The celebration of a ritual of rock and tree . 295 The Christian Oral Canon 15 . The appropriation of Biblical knowledge in the creation of new narratives of origin . 317 16 . Adam and Eve on the island of Rote . 343 17 . The Rotenese sermon as a linguistic performance . 355 18 . Present and future research . 365 Bibliography . 387 Appendix: Petrus Malesi’s Recitation Of ‘The Coming Of Rice’ . 419 Index . 433 Acknowledgments This volume in the ANU Press’s Summations series comprises a collection of my published papers on parallelism to which I have added an introduction and a conclusion. I have also added a couple of papers intended to extend the scope of the presentation of my research on parallelism. The preparation of this volume has given me the opportunity to make minor corrections and changes to each of my previously published articles. I have also slightly altered some of the introductions to these papers to give them an overall coherence in this context. These papers follow developments in my research on parallelism and I am grateful to the publishers of the original articles for their permission to reprint them. I wish to acknowledge my debt to the organisations and presses that originally hosted these publications. Specifically, I express my thanks to the following. The Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde for permission to publish the following three papers • 1971 ‘Semantic parallelism in Rotinese ritual language’ in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 127:215–55. • 1989 ‘To the aroma of the name: the celebration of a Rotinese ritual of rock and tree’ in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 145:520–38. • 2003 ‘Admonitions of the ancestors: giving voice to the deceased in Rotinese mortuary rituals’, in P. J. M. Nas, G. Persoon and R. Jaffe (eds) Framing Indonesian Realities: Essays in symbolic anthropology in honour of Reimar Schefold, pp. 15–26. Leiden: KITLV Press. Cambridge University Press for permission to publish the following two papers • 1974 ‘“Our ancestors spoke in pairs”: Rotinese views of language, dialect and code’ in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer (eds) Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, pp. 65–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • 1988 ‘“Manu Kama’s road, Tepa Nilu’s path”: theme, narrative and formula in Rotinese ritual language’ in J. J. Fox (ed.) To Speak in Pairs: Essays on the ritual languages of eastern Indonesia, pp. 161–201. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pacific Linguistics at The Australian National University for permission to publish the following two papers • 1982 ‘The Rotinese Chotbah as a linguistic performance’, in A. Halim, L. Carrington and S. A. Wurm (eds) Accent on Variety, Papers from the Third vii Explorations in Semantic Parallelism International Conference on Linguistics Vol. 3, pp. 311–18. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. • 2010 ‘Exploring oral formulaic language: a five poet analysis’ in J. Bowden and N. P. Himmelman (eds) A Journey through Austronesian and Papuan Linguistics and Cultural Space. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth for permission to publish the following paper • 1975 ‘On binary categories and primary symbols: some Rotinese perspectives’, in R. Willis (ed.) The Interpretation of Symbolism, ASA Studies 2, pp. 99–132. London: Malaby Press. Southeast Asia Program Publications at Cornell University for permission to publish the following paper that appeared in the journal Indonesia • 1983 ‘Adam and Eve on the island of Roti: a conflation of oral and written traditions’ in Indonesia 36:15–23. University of Michigan Press for permission to publish the following paper • 1989 ‘Category and complement: binary ideologies and the organization of dualism in eastern Indonesia’, in D. Maybury-Lewis and U. Almagor (eds) The Attraction of Opposites: Thought and society in a dualistic mode, pp. 33– 56. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. A version of the paper entitled ‘Blood-red millet: an origin narrative’ was originally published in German as follows • 2008 ‘Blutrote Hirse. Eine locale Ursprungserzählung von der Insel Roti’, in V. Gottowik, H. Jebens and E. Platte (eds) Zwischen Aneignung und Verfremdung: Ethnologische Gratwanderung, pp. 401–9. Frankfurt: Campus. I express my gratitude to Peter de Ridder and the Peter de Ridder Press, which appears to have ceased publishing in 1986, for the following paper • 1977 ‘Roman Jakobson and the comparative study of parallelism’, in C. H. van Schooneveld and D. Armstrong (eds) Roman Jakobson: Echoes of his scholarship, pp. 59–90. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press. I also express my gratitude to the Assosiasi Antropologi Indonesia for the following paper • 1997 ‘Genealogies of the sun and moon: interpreting the canon of Rotinese ritual chants’, in E. K. M. Masinambow (ed.) Koentjaraningrat dan Antropologi di Indonesia, pp. 321–30. Jakarta: Assosiasi Antropologi Indonesia/Yayasan Obor. Over the years, many individuals have supported me in my research on parallelism. In the endnotes to my various papers, I specifically thank those who gave me advice and comment at the time. Here I want to thank those who have viii Acknowledgments been involved in helping me put together this volume and assisting me in my current research on parallelism. First and foremost, I thank my wife, Irmgard, who has been with me from the time of our first fieldwork and, over the years, has read and reread all my writings, and corrected and advised me on my work. I would also like to thank all of the Rotenese poets whom I have known and recorded over many decades but I would like to extend special thanks to Esau Pono, my oldest living colleague on Rote, whom I first came to know in 1965 and with whom I have continued to work until the present. He is a close friend and collaborator with whom I share many memories. I would also like to thank three individuals who have joined me in my most recent research efforts. The first of these is the late Dr Tom Therik, who helped organise the first three gatherings of poets on Bali; Dr Lintje Pellu, who joined the second gathering of poets and has organised and joined all the subsequent poet gatherings; and Dr David Butterworth, who worked as my research assistant and joined our third gathering. In addition, I would like to thank Jennifer Sheehan of the Cartography Unit in the College of Asia and the Pacific for all of the charts and diagrams she has produced for this volume. For the record, these charts, diagrams and figures are all of my creation; the translations from the Rotenese are my personal attempts to convey the beauty of Rotenese poety while still retaining its parallel structure; and the photographs of Rote in this volume are from my extensive archive of photographs dating back to 1965. The film clip of the poet, Peu Malesi, included in this volume was taken by Tim Asch during our joint film expedition to Rote in 1977. I was responsible for sound recording. ix Dedication ’Old Meno’, Stefanus Adulanu, my first and foremost teacher on Rote xi Comparative Issues 1. Introduction Since 1965, when I first began to record and attempt to understand the ritual poetry of the Rotenese, the study of semantic parallelism has been a major focus of my research. My chief concern has been with the semantics of canonical parallelism. In my view, the study of parallelism and particularly the study of canonical parallelism is no minor subject but is, in fact, a matter of central theoretical importance for both anthropology and linguistics. To introduce this collection of papers, let me begin by offering some explanation of the importance I attach to research on this topic. Parallelism as a focus for research Parallelism describes the common tendency to resort to the pairing of words and phrases to provide emphasis, authority or significance to an expression of ideas. It is a common, frequently used rhetorical device in many forms of elevated speech. It is also a recurrent feature of poetic discourse—what the linguist Roman Jakobson has called the ‘poetic artifice…of recurrent returns’, or, in a similar vein, what the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins referred to as ‘the repeated figure’ in poetry. Examples of such parallelism are numerous and can be encountered daily.