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THE DUALISTIC THEME OF THE METALANGUAGE OF TRANS (PAPUA) NEW GUINEA PHYLUM LANGUAGES...... 1 INTRODUCTION...... 1 THE COGNATE WITU AND KEWA ORIGIN OF DEATH MYTHS...... 9
THE WITU MYTH OF THE ORIGIN OF AGALE ‘ARTICULATE LANGUAGE’ AND DEATH...... 9 THE KEWA MYTH OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH...... 9 THE YAGU ‘SEED FROM THE SKY’ AND THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE TRANS (PAPUA) NEW GUINEA PHYLUM OF LANGUAGES...... 13 PULU IDENTIFIED AS THE YAGU ‘SEED FROM THE SKY’ AND THE ‘FIRST BORN’ ‘PROXY’ ‘STAND IN’...... 20 THE MOMENTARINESS OF THE BIRTHING/CREATIVE ACT AT THE ZENITH AT NOON DURING AN EQUINOX THE PRODUCTIVE CONJUNCTION OF THE FUTURE AND THE PRESENT...... 22
The Dualistic Theme of the Metalanguage of Trans (Papua) New Guinea Phylum Languages Introduction The simplest introduction to the dualistic theme of the metalanguage of the Trans (Papua) New Guinea (TPNG) Phylum of languages is the very brief but powerful cognate pair of Witu and Kewa myths that deal with the origin of death. The myths are not fairly tales. They deal with the universal concern of all peoples at all times and places. This can only be dealt with parabolically. This is almost certainly why Christ mostly taught in Parables. As the full extent of this metalanguage comes to light it will become apparent that the Witu, in particular, as representative of the TNG phylum had a most remarkable and systematic understanding of natural phenomena. They knew well before the time of Marconi that messages articulated in the mouth required carrier waves on which they could be superimposed. They knew well before the time of Einstein that space and time are not independent phenomena but simply systematically related aspects of a unified system of relationships, space-time. Their understanding of a Creator who planted all things has not been through contact with the outside world. It is embedded in every level of organization of their language, the lexicon (dictionary), the grammar, and the phonology, and every level of organization of their culture in general. It dates back to a language group among the first to settle in Papua New Guinea. The third of the distinctive features of the TNG phylum of languages, represented by the Witu verb root lati that means both ‘to create’ and ‘to re-pair’ is, according to David Glasgow, Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 2 - a fellow colleague of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a feature of many Australian Aboriginal language groups. This would suggest that this most important of the distinctive features of the TNG phylum dates back to a time when there was still a land bridge between what is now two separate countries, Papua New Guinea and Australia. It will be shown that TNG phylum languages are relationship-focused. As a result they do not suffer from the limitations of what Alister McGrath said of human language in general in the 2007 edition of his book Christian Theology, Chapter 10 pages 243-244, The Doctrine of the Trinity. The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity The apparent illogicality of the doctrine “.... How can we talk about “a triune God” or the “three-in-one” without talking mathematical or metaphysical nonsense? The fundamental problem here is the inability of human language to do justice to the transcendent. Human language finds itself pressed to the limits when trying to depict and describe the doctrine. Words and images are borrowed from everyday life, and put to new uses in an attempt to capture and preserve precious insights into the nature of God.” The problem lies primarily with the limitations of an Indo European language like English. English is a language governed by Aristotelian principles. A century before him Heraclitus proposed relationship as fundamental. The great theoretical linguist of the twentieth century, Hjelmslev, proposed a theory of language that was relationship governed. He postulated only three primes which congruently governed both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships. His was a model that was ideally suited to the study of relationship-focused Trans New Guinea Phylum languages, and in particular Witu. It will become apparent that such a relationship-focused theory of language applied to the Witu language and culture in general made it much simpler to come to terms with a three-in-one Godhead, and the second member of the Godhead as the particular solution to the universal problem of death. Colin Gunton highlighted the importance of relationship in the following extract (on page 107) from his article, Relation and Relativity: The Trinity and the Created World in Trinitarian Theology Today Essays On Divine Being and Act edited by Christoph Schwöbel T&T Clark Edinburgh 1995 “There are no unchanging substances which enter into relations – as on the view of Aristotle and Newton alike - but the whole universe becomes conceivable as a dynamic structure of fields of force in mutually constitutive relations. (the underlining has been added) The following question could well be asked. Why should we be interested in metalinguistic Redemptive Analogies from a small very isolated Stone Age Culture, the Witu speaking people group? Such a small group could hardly be of any major interest to professional linguists or anthropologists or to missiologists. Knowledge of their Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 3 - language and culture would presumably add little more to the sum total of mankind’s knowledge of the world and the universe at large. It should be of no more relevance than the discovery and description of a new small species of plant or animal limited to a very small zone in space. It would be of interest to the specialist who discovered it, but could hardly be of any major interest to mankind in general. The world could get on well enough without it. But what if the small isolated Witu language group had something to tell us about their understanding of the creator and his relationship to mankind that dates back long before the time of Abraham? What if the little Witu group had something that could refute the theory of Darwinian Evolutionary Psychology that language-speaking mankind in its infancy had an extremely primitive cognitive ability that progressively developed into the superior level of cognitive ability mankind has today? What if we discover that this little Witu group reveals that when God chose the people of Israel as his receptacle for his written revelation, he had not left the rest of His world without any revelationary knowledge of Himself other than what mankind by its own devices could fitfully glean by their own untutored observation of the natural world? First let us address the problem of size and isolation. God chose a very small and isolated people to receive the written revelation which we call The Old Testament. This was no accident. Had they not originally been a small nation, and socially very isolated from other nations, even when they settled among them, they would soon have lost their national and social cohesion and their religious identity. They would no longer have been an effective receptacle for the reception and transmission of the revelation of the Book. The Witu are such a small isolated group with a quite remarkable and systematic knowledge of their Akolali God, the consequence of disobedience, death, and His solution to this problem through the coming into the world of His son. This knowledge is subliminally coded into every aspect of their language and culture in general. It is so sophisticated and so thoroughly systematic that it is hard to conceive of it as anything other than revelationary. But this revelation has had to be mediated through Nature which their Akolali God created. However, if this knowledge of the Witu was simply the product of their own search for God, then what they have to tell us about their knowledge of God and his plan of salvation for man can be dismissed as a dangerous substitute for the only true revelation embodied in the Scriptures. Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 4 -
This risk is addressed by Alister McGrath in his book Christian Theology. In his section God’s two books: nature and Scripture, under the general chapter heading Knowledge of God (p. 163ff) he notes the following. “… Francis Bacon commended the study of “the book of God’s word” and the “book of God’s work” in his Advancement of Learning (1605). “… Robert Boyle noted that “as the two great books, of nature and of scriptures, have the same author, so the study of the latter does not at all hinder an inquisitive man’s delight in the study of the former.” At times Boyle referred to the world as “God’s epistle written to mankind.” “ McGrath then notes the following under the heading, Approaches to Discerning God in Nature: “The doctrine of creation gives theological foundation to the notion of a natural knowledge of God. If God created the world, it is to be expected that God’s creation should bear the mark of the divine handiwork….But what part of creation? Where in creation is God to be found?” McGrath cites the following as evidence of his signature: Human reason, the ordering of the world, and the beauty of the world. But he then warns of the danger in giving knowledge of God through nature coequality with knowing God through revelation. In his book The Science of God (2004) under the general chapter heading Nature and the section heading Thomas F. Torrance on natural theology, whose views on natural theology are substantially akin to his own, McGrath observes the following: ‘Where Barth tends to see natural and revealed theology as two rival contenders for knowledge of God, Torrance argues that natural theology must be reconceived as an account of nature, undertaken from within the sphere of a revealed knowledge of God. To undertake natural theology, some revealed notions of God are required, - above all, a doctrine of creation. Torrance follows Barth in arguing that a natural theology which is understood as being independent of God’s self revelation must be regarded as a serious challenge to authentic and responsible Christian theology. But in Torrance’s construal of the notion, natural theology has its place under the aegis of revelation., not outside it – and certainly not opposed to it. In its improper form, natural theology represents an approach to theology which is grounded on concepts which lie outside the Christian revelation, thus subverting or distorting it.” We will find that the Witu system of Redemptive Analogies, among them the family of five uniquely distinctive terms that constitute the Zenith iconic schema, are exponents of the Akolali (God) Centric System of Interpersonal Relationship. Since this overarching system of interpersonal relationship, that congruently governs both the common language and the metalanguage, are Akolali (God) centric, all subsystems of interpersonal relationship, both linguistic and cultural, ultimately depend on the supreme high creator-being as the focal point of reference, and his symbolic residence, the matai ‘zenith’ as the focal point of reference in space-time. In the African Bible Commentary, first published in 2006 and produced by 70 of Africa’s leading, and unbelievably highly degreed theologians, the following is what Bediako Kwame, one of the contributors, wrote under the heading Scripture, Language and Culture (p. 4). Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 5 -
“Mother tongue Scripture has a fundamental place in the engagement of gospel and culture. If people recognize that Onyankopon (as God is called by the Akan of Ghana), the God they have known from time immemorial, is their Saviour and that the coming of the gospel is what they have looked forward to, then God is continuing to ensure that they will hear him each in their own language so that they can marvel at his majesty and his love for them. Our mother tongue is the language in which God speaks to each of us. He does not speak in a sacred language, but in ordinary language, so that we may hear him and realize that the gospel is about us and that we have been invited to join a company drawn from every people, tribe, tongue, nation and language (Rev 7:9)” (the underlining and bold font have been added) Consistent with this, the Witu attribute their knowledge as derived from Akolali through his own voluntary communication by katiyapale ‘lightning’. We will find that this term which is a regular lexical term of the common language also functions as a term of the metalanguage. In this latter function, its metalinguistic information is encoded subliminally by the primary pair of submorphemic constituents (SMCs)
i) the place in which a seed or a seed head is formed, and ii) the seed(head) itself is a particularly intimate formative relationship.
As a result, speakers of the Enga language use the same word wáingi for both. (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 10). Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 6 - wáingi branch (zone between branch and trunk or main stem) seedling In a relationship focused language and culture, like Enga and Witu, a branch is not just a thing in isolation but something in relationship. It is the branching zone between a side branch and the mother stem or trunk from which it took its or origin. And since binary relationships are productive, this zone is often the zone in which a seed head forms. The root part wái of this Enga word wáingi is related to the following metalinguistic pair of Enga nouns. wái seed waí message This pair of Enga words that have the same letters (phonemes) but different tones are a special pair of words of the metalanguage. They subliminally encode the metalinguistic information that words (that carry messages) are the equivalent of food (that comes from seeds). Tone word pairs are important devices of the metalanguage, and point to the fact that tone is a feature of the metalanguage rather than a feature of the regular language. Another Enga tone word pair, a pair of verbs, encodes the nature of the message, and additionally equates this message with a seed signified by a noun with the same phonemic form as the roots of the pair of verbs (Lang:44). kondé individual pandanus nut (of the karuga pandanus palm) kondénge to die kondengé to take down something that is hanging The seed is an icon for death and resurrection. The mana ‘son’, then, of Akolali, born from between the mana ‘thighs’ of a mother in the world below was himself such a seed. Both the Enga words wái ‘seed’ and waí ‘message’ are derived from the first of four very old symbolic terms for the sun which itself dies at the end of each day and then returns to new life. They trace back to a very ancient Papuan mother society in which they almost certainly encoded its symbolic function at its four primary (main) staging posts in its journey around the world during an equinox. Except for the Witu term for ‘sun’, the term lou, derived from the fourth symbolic term for the sun reconstructed as **lau, they don’t signify the sun today, but they still do signify features associated with the sun, e.g. sunlight, and features associated with the symbolic function of the matai ‘zenith’, the symbolic residence of Akolali. Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 7 -
Figure 1 The four proto iconic (symbolic) terms for the sun **pa’i standing momentarily at the zenith at **andau rising to make productive the creative planting, centre of the universe at noon conjunction with the zenith at noon **angau disjuncting from the zenith at noon and ***lau lying as if dead in a hole in the declining towards its death in the world below ground ready to return to life The sun was so symbolically important to the Egyptians that at one period they had three separate terms for the sun: Khepri in the morning, Re at noon, and Atum in the evening (McDermott 2001: 146). The first very ancient (proto symbolic/iconic) Trans New Guinea Phylum term for the sun is reconstructed as **pa’i. It no longer signifies the ‘sun’ in today’s daughter languages, but is retained in terms such as the term for ‘sunlight’ in the following languages: pa’i Witu paa Kewa wáhe Huli and fae Fasu. The first proto iconic term for the sun **pa’i symbolises the function of the sun when it stands at the zenith at noon during an equinox. This was the point in space-time when the special seed-child came into the world to fix up what had gone wrong with his father’s first creation. He came to re-pair the broken relationship between disobedient people and their Creator-Planter. It also encodes the zenith as the creative branching zone of the universe, the heavenly equivalent of the thighs of a woman. It is the source of the following Enga term (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 79). pái thighs The three proto Malayo Polynesian terms for the sun reconstructed by Dempwolff may well reflect the fact that there were three different terms specific for its different symbolic functions. Today, however, Austronesian scholars consider there should be only one proto term for the sun. Dempwolff’s proto term vai ‘sun’ may be related to the proto iconic TNG (Papuan) term **pa’i whose central constituent, represented by the apostrophe (‘), is the glottal stop. Very significantly, the TNG (Papuan) proto iconic term **pa’i is the source of the Enga term pái ‘thigh’ (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 79) and páki ‘stem/stalk of a leaf’ (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 80). Dempwolff’s proto Malayo Polynesian term *pahi similarly means both ‘thigh’ and ‘stalk’. Consistent with the above, the roots with form pi of the following pair of Enga verbs are derived from the first proto iconic term for the ‘sun’, **pa’i (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 86). Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 8 -
pingí to do to make to wear píngi to hit to kill The following Kewa cognate of the Enga verb root pi of the first of the above pair of Enga verbs is another derivative of the first proto iconic term for the ‘sun’ **pa’i (see Franklin and Franklins’ Kewa Dictionary page 305). pa to make something perform an action Most significantly, the Enga verb pingí meaning ‘to make’ ‘to do’ and ‘to wear’ has the following synonyms (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary pages113, 110, 145). wapungí to create to fix (=to repair) wái lyíngi to create to fix (=to re-pair) The first constituent word wái of the second verb expression is related to the first of the following metalinguistic pair of Enga nouns, cited already, both of them derived from the first proto iconic term for the sun **pa’i. (Lang:110). wái seed waí message The second word, the verb lyíngi as an independent verb has the following two lexical functions (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 61). lyíngi to dance lyíngi to injure oneself The periphrastic Enga verb expression wái lyíngi, then, subliminally encodes the following two apparently antonymic metalinguistic messages. wái lyíngi the seed dances wái lyíngi the seed injures itself The Enga verb expression wái lyíngi that means both ‘to create’ and ‘to fix up’, i.e. re-pair a broken relationship has, then, the same apparently antonymic pair of lexical functions as the Witu verb root lati. But it has an additional increment of metalinguistic function. It encodes the way the broken relationship would be re-paired. It would be re-paired by the death of the seed-child who entered the world from the zenith at noon during an equinox to solve the problem of death. It will be shown later that the names of the pair of givers of language to the Witu, Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane’, do not signify names of the Witu Godhead, additional to Akolali, also known as Yali, and Pulu. The name Tu is a metalinguistic term for the embodiment of the seed-child, who embodied a special message from his father, the creator, Akolali. It is related to the term for a single kernel of the fruiting body of the karuga pandanus palm in the following Enga noun expression (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 90. Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 9 -
ánga túu ánga túu> pandanus nut (single one) karuka pandanus palm nut> The first word ánga is related to the proto generic term for the karuga pandanus palm in the Enga family of languages. It is one of the derivatives of the third proto iconic term for the sun **angau. This is proto iconic (symbolic) term that encodes the symbolic function of the sun as its disjuncts from the zenith at noon during an equinox and moves down towards its death in the world below. The second word túu signified a single nut or kernel of the fruiting body of this pandanus palm. It was the message death doomed mankind had been hoping for. It was the permanent solution to the problem of death. He was to be the permanent solution to those who heard and accepted him. The name Ane is a metalinguistic term for the ears of those willing to receive him and his message. It is related in the metalanguage to the Kewa term for ‘ear’, aane (see Franklin and Franklins’ Kewa Dictionary page 121).
The Cognate Witu and Kewa Origin of Death Myths The Witu myth of the origin of agale ‘articulate language’ and death Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane’ stood at Mount Gilue to the west of Witu territory and called three people groups to come for their language. They called the Kewa, the Lai and the Witu. Two of the people groups, the Kewa and the Lai, obeyed and came at once for their languages. As Tu and Ane gave them their languages, they said the two words pipite yagute. These two words meant that they would live forever. The third people group, the Witu, disobeyed and did not come for their language until Tu and Ane called them four times at four different places. Each time they called the Witu they made a ground oven for them. At the end they went right into Witu land and made a fourth ground oven. When the Witu finally came for their language Tu and Ane said the two words komaye talaye as they gave them their language. This meant that they were doomed to die. The Kewa myth of the origin of death Four men were living in the Ialibu Basin, each unaware of the presence of the others. But Yakili had created all four of them and put them in their separate places. Intending to give a speech one day, he called them to attend. He arrived, in appearance, half man and half vegetation. He gave his great speech by saying: pipnua, yagunu meaning: 'Lose your skin, live forever'. He concluded his speech with an explanation of his appearance. One of the four men, however, did Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 10 -
not turn up on time, and arrived when his creator was about to leave. He questioned Yakili saying akelaepa meaning: 'What have you said?' Yakili turned around and said: komanua ralanua meaning 'Death, increase'. He added two more words: epeanua koeyanu meaning 'Good, evil'. After that he disappeared in the sky above, never to be seen again. The following table shows that the Witu and Kewa myths are related to each other, and are retentions from a common source. The Witu myth is the most powerful myth since it deals with the origin of language as well as the origin of death, and includes three people groups, the Kewa who represented the very large Enga family and the Lai who represent the very large Wahgi-Chimbu family of the Trans New Guinea Phylum. The Witu were a very small people group, geographically and socially isolated, with no significant dialect variations, living at the southern point of convergence of the two large people groups. They were the only member of their family, and so are referred to as a family-level isolate. All this may explain why the Witu language group seems to have retained more of the original metalanguage than the two very much bigger and less isolated people groups with substantial internal dialect variation. In a sense the Witu were like the Hebrew people of Israel, a small geographically and socially isolated language group, whose smallness and isolation was important for their role as the preservers of the Hebrew Old Testament. Figure 2 The primary features of the Witu and Kewa origin myths Obedience Disobedience Life Death Witu pipite yagute komaye talaye
Kewa pipnua yagunu komanua ralanua Yakili’s assessment epeanua koeyanu ‘good’ ‘evil’
The form of the roots of the pairs of words which encode life and death Obedience Life Disobedience Death
paired submorphemic constituents no paired submorphemic constituents Witu
Kewa
The Kewa called their creator Yakili. This is the name the Witu used for their creator, Akolali, when he communicated with them by the Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 11 - katiyapale ‘lightning’ when it struck a tree and smashed it into pieces. They said the following when he did so. Yakilime witiko.
The importance of the relationship between seeds and words is so important to the Witu that Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane prepared grounds ovens, in which they would have cooked vegetable food, as they waited on four different occasions, at four different sites, for the disobedient Witu to come for the gift of their agale ‘articulate language’. The first site was at Mt Gilue where they made the first call. Their final site was inside Witu territory. This was the measure of their concern for the Witu. They gave the Witu four chances to obey and come for their gift. They were willing to go right into territory to make their final, and last, call. The Witu myth uses the pipi species of tree as a symbol for eternal life, the reward for obedience. It is the root of the first word pipite in the two-words pipite yagute spoken by Tu and Ane to the obedient Kewa and Lai people groups. It has been adopted as a natural symbol for eternal life for the following reason. If its bark is removed, the bark grows again. As a result the tree does not die. Its life is renewed so that it keeps on living and growing. It remains what may be referred to as an organic structured entity.
The yagu ‘seed from the sky’ and the distinctive features of the Trans (Papua) New Guinea Phylum of languages The root yagu of the second word of the two-word utterance pipite yagute that encodes the promise of eternal life for obedient people encodes the means by which they would obtain eternal life. They were to eat the ‘seed from the sky’. The root yagu of the second word yagute is an example of the first of the distinctive features of the Trans New Guinea Phylum of languages that were implicit in the following observations by McElhanon and Voorhoeve in the publication in which they first suggested the existence of the Trans New Guinea Phylum of languages. Distinctive feature 1 of Trans New Guinea Phylum languages: the binary coding system “During the investigation it appeared that a number of words which are synchronically monomorphemic could be regarded as bimorphemic from the historical point of view. The identification of such bimorphemic forms depended on the possibility of recognizing probable cognates of one or both of the suspected constituents in other languages. Each case had to be decided on its own merits,…” (p. 5) The root yagu of the word yagute is what McElhanon and Voorhoeve called a word that seemed today (i.e. synchronically) to be a single morpheme (i.e., monomorphemic) but must earlier in its history have been the product of combination of two morphemes (i. e. bimorphemic). Sometimes one or both parts were borrowed from another dialect or language group. It is now known that such words Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 13 - were mostly, if not always, deliberately coined to encode metalinguistic information. This distinctive feature can be illustrated by the following pair of Witu words that encode the temporary solution to the problem of death for the disobedient Witu. kolotini
pa Witu paa Kewa wáhe Huli fae Fasu The fundamental metalinguistic information encoded by these two pairs of bimorphemic Kewa adjectives comes to light when the terminal adjective-specific SMCs
Ane waited for them to come to the feast of vegetable food from the ground ovens they prepared at four different sites along the track between Mount Gilue and the Witu’s home territory. The third distinctive feature of Trans New Guinea Phylum of languages encodes the re-pairing of the spiritual relationship between disobedient people and their Creator. It is represented by the Witu verb root lati-.
Distinctive feature 3 of Trans New Guinea Phylum languages: the repair of the broken relationship lati- to create lati- to re-pair This distinctive feature is a feature of geographically widely separated languages throughout Papua New Guinea, from Rossel Island in the far east to the Sandaun Province in the far west. vyómu make fix Yele language Rossel Island talaluaamin create fix/heal Tifal language Sandaun Province Enga has three verbs that mean both to create or make and to fix up or re-pair. Each is different from the other two and from the Witu verb root lati-. wapuingí wapungí, to create to fix up Enga (Lang 1973:113, 136) wasingí watingí to create to fix up wái lyíngi to create to fix up The exceptional irregularity of this distinctive feature identifies it as perhaps the most significant device of the metalanguage whose primary theme is the irregular intrusion of death and whose counter theme is the final permanent solution to this universal problem. It has two major irregularities. One is semantic. The other is formal. There is a third irregularity. It is the simplest of the three distinctive features. The semantic function of the third distinctive feature, represented by the Witu verb root lati-, is highly irregular in the following way. The term that expounds it has two paradoxically antonymic (opposite) lexical functions in all the Trans New Guinea phylum languages that retain it. It means both ‘to create’ and ‘to re-pair’ what had gone wrong. The form of the root, word or verb expression that expounds this third distinctive feature is also highly irregular. It is highly irregular in the following way. It never has the same form even in geographically neighbouring languages. There is effectively an unwritten rule that it must never have the same form in other Trans New Guinea Phylum languages. This rule reflects the most important of all distinctive features of TNG languages. They are relationship-focused. Relationships are basically paired relationships between persons and paired relationships between the activities or events in which they are involved. This means that the form of the verb with this paradoxical pairs of meanings is unimportant. The only thing that is important is the relationship Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 19 - between the two events or activities. One event cannot exist without the other. Following the initial great event, the creation, the relationship that was broken had to be re-paired. The importance of both events and their paired relationship is established by paradoxically signifying both apparently very different events by the same term. The universal relevance of both events to today’s daughter language groups is highlighted in the following way. Each of the daughter language groups recognised the vital importance of both events to them individually. So each of them devised their own form to signify how personal both events were for them. Pulu identified as the yagu ‘seed from the sky’ and the ‘first born’ ‘proxy’ ‘stand in’ We turn now to the base constituents
The second proto iconic (symbolic) term for the sun from which the second adjectival base andaa is derived encodes the sun rising symbolically from its place of origin in the east to make symbolic conjunction with the zenith, the symbolic domain of the Creator- Planter, at noon during an equinox. When the adjectival bases paa and andaa of the above two pairs of systematically irregular Kewa adjectival words are combined, the product is the subliminal metalanguistic term **paanda. This hidden metalanguistic term **paanda is very like the following Kyaka Enga word (see Draper and Draper’s Kyaka Enga Dictionary: 305-306). panda i) proxy, stand in, heir inheritor ii) place, area, locality, village iii) opportunity
This Kyaka Enga word panda is irregular because it has three very different lexical functions , like the second of the following pair of Enga words below, the word ángí already cited above (see Lang’s Enga Dictionary page 9). ángi ‘a single pandanus kernel’ = konde source of Witu odene [onde-ne] ‘one’ ángí i) ‘eldest’ ii) ‘middle aged’ iii) ‘true’ ‘real’ ‘genuine’ The Kyaka Enga word panda has three very different meanings because it is being used like the Enga word ángí as part of the metalanguage. The metalanguage is about how the Creator-Planter of all living things created mankind. It is about how people disobeyed and were doomed to die. It is about how the Son of the Creator-Planter had to come down into the world to re-pair the broken relationship between disobedient people and their Creator. It is about the Son becoming the stand in for disobedient people and dying in their place, as their proxy. All this is encoded by the five uniquely irregular terms of the Witu Zenith Iconic Schema summarised very briefly in another file. The irregularity of the three paradoxically different lexical functions of the Enga term ángi, cited above, identifies it as a particularly important device of the metalanguage of this and the other TNG languages in focus at this point. Their systematically different lexical functions can be simply accounted for in the following way when it is realized that they encode the symbolic function of the sun when it stands at the zenith at noon during an equinox. When it has reached Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 21 - the zenith, the highest point in the universe, it encodes the ‘eldest’ member of a family. At this point in space-time, the sun is also exactly half way through a conflated pair of functions. One control the daily night and day vegetative growth of plants on which all living creatures ultimately depend. The other is the yearly movement between the two solstices which determines the flowering cycle of plants and the mating cycles of creatures. This accounts for the fact that this Enga term ángi means ‘middle aged’. Finally, when the sun stands at the zenith at noon during an equinox it marks the point off conflation of two mirror-image halves, the pre-noon and the post-noon halves. This is an icon (symbol) for ‘truth’ and goodness. It is a palindrome, one of the most important devices of the metalanguage for encoding goodness, harmony and balance. This is why the Witu and Kewa adjectival root epe means both ‘good’’ and ‘middle aged’. It is the most basic, and so most fundamental of palindromes, a phonemic palindrome. If the order of the phonemes is reversed the word remains unchanged. Consistent with this, Witu men, like Highland Papua New Guinea men in general, signified that they were telling the truth by holding their fourth finger, their index finger, vertically along the ridge of the nose and pointing upwards to the zenith. The index finger lay at the point of conjunction of the two halves of the sentient head. It encoded the functional dynamic of the human being as the product of the collaborating left and right hand sides of the body below the neck, and the role of the paired eyes and the paired ears, on either side of the head, as vital in responding to the three dimensional organisation of the world. Consistent with all this the Witu word for ‘’truth’ is a palindrome, a syllabic palindrome, nimini. The momentariness of the birthing/creative act at the zenith at noon during an equinox the productive conjunction of the future and the present The Kyaka Enga term panda that means ’proxy, stand in, heir and inheritor’ also means ‘place’ and ‘village’. This is because a person’s identity is determined by his citizenship, the place where he lives. Witu men were always called by their name and by the place where they lived on important ceremonial occasions. The author was always called Waliai Alo ‘Harland who lives near the Waliai Creek’. Christ was called Jesus of Nazareth’. In the same way Jesus taught his disciples to begin their prayer to His Father God with the words, “Our Father who is in heaven”. Pulu was the second dream giver. His ‘as (arse) place’ (his citizenship) was in heaven with the Creator-Planter Akolali who was also the Number One dream giver Yali. Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 22 -
The Kyaka Enga word panda also means ‘opportunity’. This meaning is very important because it tells us about the time the first born male (the heir) came into the world. The word opportunityi means a very short period of time when it is possible to do something or possible for something to happen. This is why the English word ‘opportunity’ is translated by the Witu verb suffix -ta that means a very short period of time when it was possible for something to be done or for something to happen. It is the last part of the following Witu verb. lawete-pona-mene-ta feed-pass by-negative-limited time (opportunity) It means ‘there was not any opportunity (chance) to feed (the fowls) on the way past (them)’. It means that the person who was asked to feed fowls before he went to another place did not have even a short moment of time to feed them. He did not have an opportunity to feed them. The Witu suffix -ta means ‘a very short period in time or space’. When the Kyaka Enga word panda means ‘opportunity’ and ‘chance’ it is being used as part of the metalanguage about the special seed child coming into the world from the zenith at midday during an equinox. The sun stands at the zenith at midday for only a very short time during an equinox. It was during that very short time that he entered the world as a small child from between the thighs of his mother. That was the opportune time for the heir of the Creator-planter, his first born son, to enter the world as a small (seed) child from his heavenly father’s place, the zenith, to become the stand in (the proxy) for disobedient people who were doomed to die. He would die for them. Akolali governs the eternal present moment from his place at the zenith. The first of the four very ancient symbolic terms for the sun is the word **pa’i. It stands for the symbolic function of the sun when it is at the matai ‘zenith’ for a short ‘present’ moment in time and space, the ‘here and now’, moment. This is why the Witu word opi ‘now’ is related to the Witu verb opi that means ‘to beget’ a child as a man and ‘to give birth to a child’ as a woman. This is also why the Oksapmin word that means ‘here’, the word matei, is related to the Witu word for the ‘zenith’, the word matai. It is at this very short ‘here and now’ moment in space and time, the brief moment of opportunity, that the on-coming future meets the present to produce (beget/give birth to) the on-going past. The subliminal (hidden/encoded) metalanguage shows in the following way that past time is produced by the coming together of: Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 23 -
i) the on-coming future time, with ii) the present moment of opportunity.
The on-coming future brings with it the fulfillment of dreams. It is like the puluma pigeon that flies (rises) up from the world below to and over the top of a mountain. It is also like the sun rising up to the top of the universe, zenith. This is why the following verb that means ‘to fly up and over a mountain’ like the puluma pigeon also means ‘to fulfill a dream’. tateka ‘to fly up and over a mountain top’ tateka ‘to fulfill a dream’ The first part of this verb ta is the main part of this verb. It is the root part. It means ‘to rise up’ in Witu. Harland Kerr was told the following information that shows that the Witu believed that the puluma pigeon symbolized the second dream giver Pulu. He was told that the top ranking chief Epei, meaning ‘Bamboo Knife’, had been killed in inter clan fighting just before he and his family settled in his district of Poloko in 1960 before Witu territory was derestricted. He was told that chief Epei was killed because he had broken a cultural taboo and revealed the names of his dream-givers. He revealed their names by calling a pair of his daughters Yalinu and Pulumanu. Witu has three time suffixes, called ‘tense’ suffixes that are a special part of the metalanguage about the work of the second dream giver of the Witu, Pulu. Though he was a High Being, like Akolali, who was also the Number One dream giver, he became a human being with a body to save people. He was not only the giver of dreams. He was also the one who was himself the fulfillment of the most important of all dreams forecasting the future. When he received a body he was governed by time. He was born as a little child from between the mana ‘thighs’ of his mother. He died on the cross as an epene ago [evene ako] ‘the good/perfect man’ half way through his life, while his mother stood close by. The tense (time) suffixes tell whether the action someone is talking about is: Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 24 -
i) happening in the ‘present’ while the speaker is still talking, or ii) is going to happen in the ‘future’ after the speaker stops talking, or iii) has already happened in the ‘past’ before the speaker was talking.
These three tense suffixes are also part of the metalanguage that tells about the way the Creator-Planter of all things sent his first born Son, his heir, down into the world below to be the stand in for sinful people. They show us that the past is the embodiment of the on-coming up- rising future coming into conjunction with the present moment at the zenith. This is why the ‘past’ tense suffix -ko is made up of the ’present’ tense suffix -k and the ‘future’ tense suffix -o. i) present tense -k + ii) future tense -o iii) past tense -ko The ‘present’ tense suffix -k is very irregular. It is the only affix in the language that consists of nothing but a consonant. This irregularity shows that the ‘present’ tense affix -k is a very important part of the Witu metalanguage that tells about the irregularity of death coming into the world and the way this problem was re-paired. It is a sign for the very short period of time, the opportune moment, when the special seed child came into the world below from his father’s homeland, the zenith above, to re-pair the problem of death. This is how it works. The consonant k is one of three consonants that are called ‘stop’ consonants. That is because they are made by stopping air from coming through the mouth for a short moment. All three of the stop consonants, /p/ /t/ and /k/, stop the air from coming out of the mouth for a moment if they occur at the beginning of a word, for example: pine ‘root’ ‘meaning’ ‘cause’, tine ‘offspring’, kala ‘kunai grass’. The stop consonant /p/ is made by stopping the flow of air from coming out of the mouth at the lips (the labia). So it is called the bilabial stop. The stop consonant /t/ is made by stopping the flow of air from coming through the mouth with the tip of the tongue at the ridge of the mouth just behind the teeth, the alveolar ridge. So it is called the alveolar stop. The stop consonant k is made by stopping the flow of air from coming out of the mouth at the back of the mouth, the velum. So it is called the velar stop. The stop consonant /k/ is the only stop consonant that always stops the air from coming out of the mouth for a short moment. The bilabial Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 25 - stop /p/ does not always stop the flow of air from coming out of the mouth. If it is in the middle of word and beside the vowel /e/, then it is pronounced like the English consonant /v/, for example kepene ‘skin’, pronounced phonetically like [kevene]. The /v/ sound is a fricative sound because the air keeps on coming through the mouth and causes friction. The alveolar stop /t/ also does not always stop the flow of air from coming out of the mouth. If it is in the middle of a word, it often, but not always, becomes like a fricative, and is pronounced like the English consonant /r/, for example in the word for the little bird called the tiyotiyo that tricked the kebi ‘cassowary’ from flying up into trees to eat fruit. Its name is pronounced phonetically as [tiyoriyo]. Only the velar stop consonant /k/ always stops the air from coming out of the mouth for a short moment. It stops the air from coming out of the mouth whether it occurs at the beginning of a word or in the middle of a word. This is why Witu uses the velar stop /k/ all by itself to be the ‘present’ tense affix -k. It shows that the Witu believe that the present is just a very short stop in the flow of time between the oncoming future and the ongoing past. This ‘present tense’ suffix is one of the two most irregular suffixes in the language. No other root, affix or clitic consists of nothing but a consonant. Its irregularity identifies it as a very important part of the Witu metalanguage whose main theme is the irregularity of the entry of death into the world Akolali God had created, If it was the only irregularity of its kind it could be ignored and treated as a random, and so meaningless, irregularity. But its irregularity is matched by the irregularity of another tense suffix. The other highly irregular tense suffix is the ‘past tense’ suffix -ka. This suffix is the only affix in the language that is what linguists call a portmanteau morpheme: it has two functions combined into one, like two things placed inside a container or bag/portmanteau. It tells us two different but related things. It tells us the time of the action of the verb to which it is attached. It also tells us something about the subject of the action. It tells us that the subject of the activity is a single person other than the speaker. It also tells us that this person’s act occurred in the past. Because there is a pair of highly irregular tense suffixes, their irregularity is a shared irregularity, and therefore not a random meaningless irregularity. It is a systematic irregularity. It reflects the irregularity of death. We now note that this irregular ‘past tense’ portmanteau morpheme suffix -ka has another important metalinguistic function. It is related in the metalanguage to the Witu term ka that means both a ‘track’ and a ‘string net bag’. The letters of the word for a track are identical with the letters of the word for a ‘string net bag’, and both have the same Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 26 - tone-word pattern. Tracks form a network that ties a whole district together like the loops of twine of a string net bag.. A string net bag is a network of loops that shape up into a whole bag. A string net bag is a symbol for pregnancy and birth. At birth a child enters the track of life. Every day extends the track of life of a person until in old age they come to the end of their life and die, at a time that Akolali has decided on when he first fixed the double helix po ‘twine’ or spirit life to the child at birth. All this shows how brilliantly the Witu understand the way their language works and how they use this knowledge to study and speak about the world of the spirit, and about life and death and its solution in their metalanguage. We now note the following. When the velar stop consonant k is used to mean ‘the present’ (the opportune) moment in time, it shows that this moment is a very brief break in the flow of time from the future to the past. It is a metalanguage sign that the present opportune moment is a brief break in the flow of time at the matai ‘zenith’ during an equinox. This is when the sun is exactly half way from its home in the east to its home in the west during the day. It is also the very brief moment when the sun is exactly half way in its movement from one solstice to another. The movement of the sun during the day controls the daily activity of people, animals and bird and the daily growth of plants they must eat to live. The movement of the sun between the two solstices controls the mating of animals and birds and the flowering of plants. So this short opportune moment when the sun is at the zenith and directly overhead is the moment when the sun stands in the presence of the Creator-planter of all things. It is the moment of truth. It is the moment when a tall pole casts no shadow. Light dominates darkness. This was the moment when the seed child died on the cross to re-pair the break in the relationship between the disobedient Witu and Akolali, their Creator-planter. This was why the Witu of the Poloko District took their 20’ tall tugi yomo ‘stubborn poles’ out of their dark 20’ tall tibu yapu ‘timbu spirit houses’ with their conical kabe ‘roofs’ (necks) pointing to the zenith and stood them up erect in a line down the middle of the poma ‘dancing green’ at the mi yapu (taro house) ‘ceremonial village’ during the month of September. Inside the tibu yapu ‘timbu sprit house’ they stood in total darkness. If a chink of light broke through the circular wall the hole had to be blocked off immediately. Because the ‘past’ tense suffix -ka is very irregular in this way we know that it is an important part of the metalanguage that tells about the irregularity of death and the way the problem of death was re- paired. We discover what it means in the metalanguage when we discover that it is related to the Witu word ka that means a ‘string net Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 27 - bag’. A string net bag is a sign for pregnancy. This is why a string net bag has this meaning in the following Witu examples. Tine utuko.
Yobo utuko.