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A Nthropology N Ew Sletter Special theme: Languages and Linguistics at an Ethnological Museum National Museum of Language is a window into the human mind and reflects human activities, Ethnology while linguistics is an academic field where languages are analyzed from a scientific view-point. As an ethnological museum, Minpaku has a strong focus Osaka on fieldwork, which is necessary for linguists and ethnologists to study languages and learn about human beings and their diversity. Essays in this Number 39 issue present glimpses of the thoughts of linguists at Minpaku who combine linguistic fieldwork and later analysis at their desks. What is unique to December 2014 researchers at Minpaku, however, is that we are also involved with exhibitions for the public and have everyday communication with Anthropology Newsletter anthropologists in other fields. Languages do not exist without humans and humans do not exist without language. We believe that linguistic research is a good starting point on the path to a better understanding of who we are. MINPAKU Yak and Pig, Glacier and Sea Noboru Yoshioka National Museum of Ethnology Why do many Japanese-language dictionaries contain the word yaku [jakɯ] ‘yak’? When I was in the field, this question all of a sudden struck me. To make sure that my facts were correct, I checked the desktop dictionaries that I was carrying — a pocket-size dictionary published in 1979, a student dictionary published in 1996, and one Contents published in 2008 — and confirmed that all of these actually contained Languages and Linguistics the word as I had thought. Living in at an Ethnological Museum Japan, it is hard to see real yaks. Noboru Yoshioka Even in zoos, since there are only Yak and Pig, Glacier and Sea ..... 1 three that currently keep yaks, and we hardly hear the word yaku in Ritsuko Kikusawa Japan in our everyday life. I wonder “What is Your Name?” Variations how many people actually know what in Fijian Languages and Their yaks are. Or, hyōga [hjoːɡa] ‘glacier’. Pre-historic Implications There is no glacier in Japan, but the ................................................. 3 word appears in many Japanese- Keiko Sagara language dictionaries. I do not think Numeral Systems in Sign it would be difficult to find such Languages Across the World ...... 5 words in a dictionary of any Yoshiho Yasugi language, provided that the language Head-marked Languages in is a so-called major language — even Middle America ......................... 7 words whose references are seemingly unrelated to the area Hiroshi Shōji where the language is spoken, or to Examining the Linguistic Mind the lives of its speakers. of Japanese ............................... 9 Since the modern keywords ‘information technology’ came into Column ...................................... 11 fashion, all kinds of information have Exhibitions ................................. 13 been flying around through various kinds of media, all over the world. We Conferences ................................ 15 can see cubic crystals of salt Information ................................. 16 naturally build on the water’s edge of the Dead Sea on an iPad, while lying Visiting Scholar .......................... 16 on a couch in the living room of our Publications ................................ 16 own house. It seems as if everybody in the world can fully get to know http://www.minpaku.ac.jp/ 2 MINPAKU Anthropology Newsletter No 39 December 2014 Yoshioka is an each other without leaving home. In difference between study of a major or a assistant professor at this age of diffusion of information, minor target language. (Of course, Minpaku. His doctoral dissertation for the when information is so readily minor languages have less chance to be Tokyo University of available, what I do is go to villages made into a form of ‘information’, such Foreign Studies (2012) deep in the mountains of Pakistan from as to be digitized.) Even for major was entitled ‘A a city in Japan, carrying large bags for languages, field research is still reference grammar of Eastern Burushaski’. research on their languages. How necessary to understand how they His current research worthwhile is this kind of fieldwork? developed, and how they are changing. concerns the Burushaski is a target language for What my experience tells me is that documentation of my research, an unwritten language there are notions which we do not, or languages in northern Pakistan, in isolate spoken by about 100,000 cannot, become aware of without particular, speakers. The language does not have a actually going to the field and Burushaski, Domaaki, word for ‘sea’, because there is no sea conducting linguistic fieldwork. In the and Shina. He is also in the area where the speakers live. It field I learned why the variety ‘bitter interested in conducting a does not have a word for ‘pig’. People apricot’ ( ) is cultivated, multilayered areal there have been Muslims for hundreds even though it is too bitter to eat. typology of languages of years and so there are no pigs in People mix this particular kind of spoken in the region. their life. Are there any words at all for apricot into livestock feed. In the field I entities which do not exist there? recorded and learned the names of two Verifying existing entities is easy. In ways of grafting apricot trees, one of Japanese, we can easily confirm that which was an indigenous method and there are words ‘yak’ and ‘glacier’ (you the other introduced. And such can do it just on the web), despite the realization is not limited to what exists truth that there are no yaks and have in the local culture itself. In the field I been no glaciers in Japan. (Three became aware that the idea of the four glaciers in Toyama were verified only in cardinal points, namely north, south, 2012.) By contrast, it is very difficult to east, and west, are not very useful in a confirm if there are any words in non-flat land. (Burushaski originally Japanese for ‘the oldest bull on the did not have these words.) And in the innermost side of a group of bulls that field, again, the question occurred to are walked in circular movements for me — that I mentioned at the beginning threshing wheat’ (in Burushaski, ʦʰindíʂ) of this article — why do languages and ‘dried apricot having a kernel differ in the extent to which each inside after removing its shell’ (ʨʰaŋóɾ). contains culturally external In fact, I never knew that these information? I had not realized, growing concepts existed before I started to do up in Japan, the simple fact that a fieldwork. language that does not have a word for Why do yaks live and glaciers flow in ‘sea’ may not have a word for ‘island’ Japanese, while we can neither bathe in either. (Of course, such language may a sea nor see pigs in Burushaski? have special terms for sandbars along a Perhaps it reflects the differences river, or small islands in a lake.) between a major language, a national In the field, people kept on asking language with millions of speakers, and me in Burushaski, ɡósulo balímia? ‘Did it a minor language, a language with fall into your heart?’, or in Domaaki, a relatively few speakers in a remote area. neighbouring Indo-European language, For doing fieldwork, there is no practical jána peɡáa? ‘Did it fall into the heart?’ I did not understand the meaning of these questions, but, one day, it all of a sudden became clear to me that they were saying: ‘Do you understand?’ These expressions are parallel to the Japanese somatic expression huni ochiru [ɸɯ ni oʨiɾɯ], ‘fall into the guts’, having the general sense ‘to feel one completely understands something’. Semantically, this resembles the English phrase, to get one’s head around something. In the latter case, the part of body used in the expression is different. Such idiomatic expressions, with body parts in particular, can be like a hydroscope clearly revealing to us the background thinking of a language community. Burushaski speakers offer to feed someone by making his lip run (iíl éːskaɾʦas), while Domaaki speakers respect someone by swinging their Bualtar Glacier, Pakistan (Yoshioka, 2008) hand (hot pʰiɾaːná). In Urdu they deeply December 2014 MINPAKU Anthropology Newsletter No 39 3 love someone with their livers burned different languages are spoken. Such (ʥɪɡəɾ soˑxta ). Or Japanese systems are found not only through people get unhappy and become language study. They can also be found obstinate with their navels bent (heso-o through various facets of anthropology mageru [heso o maɡeɾɯ]), while English (for example, social, cultural, and speakers do not, but can have a broken psychological). In this age of heart following an unhappy love information diffusion, some researchers relationship. may be able to gather a lot of What we can learn about while information without going to the field, conducting fieldwork are different but I believe their methods will never systems of knowledge that have achieve more than what can be developed in the environments where gathered through field research. “What is Your Name?” Variations in Fijian Languages and Their Pre-historic Implications Ritsuko Kikusawa National Museum of Ethnology I often feel that field linguists form a this would be their response to me if I unique category of mankind. And I were to utter a single word there in happen to be one of them. When Standard Fijian or English. However, visiting a new place, probably one of using the above phrase immediately the most common first considerations made the other person switch back to is how likely s/he will manage with the their own dialect, being now aware that language skills that s/he has. If your I wanted to learn their language, and own language, or a language you are not ‘Fijian’. It was as though I had familiar with, is spoken or known to be waved a magic wand or something understood there, many people feel similar.
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