The Winners and Finalists of the 2008 AAA Photo Contest are now available in a Flickr gallery. The photos are really beautiful — I’m honoured that one of my submissions is featured among them (and happy that Siwu ideophones are getting some press!).
Click on a photo in the slideshow below to show the author and the caption; or go directly to the slideshow on Flickr.
Edit: The semifinalists are now online, too: Flickr gallery.
It’s here. Zotero 1.5 beta. The new version comes with built-in synchronization, exports to more than 1100 citation styles, and supports browsing your library online (see below). Zotero is now better than EndNote on all fronts. Here’s a quick overview of the most important features:
All of this built on open source technologies and standards, which means that your data is not locked up in proprietary software at the mercy of profit driven companies.
Meanwhile, the Zotero website has seen a major revamping, the most important new feature being the ability to browse your library online. Other features are more geared towards social networking activities: users now can have an online Zotero profile, can follow other Zotero users, and can build an online CV.
If you’re still stuck on EndNote, check out making the switch to Zotero, or see my review and comparison from last year. Questions? There are lots of helpful and friendly people hanging out in the Zotero forums. You can also post them below.
Science has just published a comment by me on Oard’s “Unlocking the potention of the spoken word” (Oard 2008). It is a critique of the monomodal view of language adopted in that article. (If you haven’t read the original piece, check it out here, or see my brief summary.) Continue reading
Funeral dirges (sìnɔ in Siwu) are a special genre of songs to be sung during the period of public mourning preceding a burial. The musical structures of these dirges and their place in the larger context of the funeral have been described in some detail by Agawu (1988) and before him by the German missionary Friedrich Kruse (1911); however, the linguistic aspects of the genre have not received any attention so far.
The funeral dirge below was recorded August 17, 2007 in Akpafu-Mempeasem, Volta Region, Ghana (along with six other dirges). It was transcribed and translated with the gentle help of Reverend A.Y. Wurapa.
| Siwu | English gloss |
|---|---|
|
mɛ̀ sɔ màturi pia mɛ̀ sêgbe kàku kaɖè sêgbe nnɔmɛ miɖè sêgbe ìsoma iɖè sêgbe àsekpe aɖè |
I said, ‘people are with me’ not knowing it meant mourning not knowing it meant tears not knowing it meant sadness not knowing it meant graves |
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The Siwu is beautifully economic in expression. It contains only two verbs: pia ‘be (with)’ and ɖe ‘be (existential)’. The sɔ that is translated as ‘said’ is actually a quotative complementizer. An English translation cannot do without marking tense, but in Siwu, the poem does not contain any tense or aspect markers, being set in an aorist-like default that can be interpreted as recent past or present.
Some of the poetic devices at work here are lost in translation. One is the focus construction which emphasizes the content words in the last four Siwu lines (‘mourning it is; tears it is; sadness it is; graves it is’). Another is the fact that these content words belong to four different grammatical genders in Siwu: the first is an noun in KA with locative connotation, the second a liquid/mass noun in MI, the third a singular noun in I, the fourth a plural noun in A. I’m not sure whether this pattern is as striking to native speakers as it is to me, but note that the gender is reinforced by the agreement morphology on the ‘be’-verb (ka-, mi-, i-, a-). One could think of it as a case of ‘subliminal verbal patterning in poetry’ (Jakobson 1980).
Continue reading
Colleen’s post about the Hand Drawn Map Contest reminded me of a neat map of Kawu I was given some time ago. Kawu is the area where I do fieldwork, located in the Hohoe district of Ghana’s beautiful Volta Region. This map was drawn in 2003 by John Atsu, literacy coordinator and member of the Siwu Language Committee
The main villages (squares) and the tarred roads (thick lines) would be found on any sufficiently detailed map; more interesting are the farm settlements (FM), where farmers stay overnight if they work far from home; and the foot paths (x-x-x-x) that connect the villages where there are no roads.
I’m not sure why the map is oriented as it is (with West on the lower side), not having done fieldwork in enough different villages to be sure about how the Mawu talk about directionality and orientation. The mountainous area on the lower side of the map is simply called Kùbe ‘the mountains’; partly in it, partly beyond it lies Awubeame, literally ‘in the mountains of the Mawu’, the area where the Mawu people lived before they split up into Akpafu and Lolobi.
The Kawu area is divided into two zones: Akpafu (north-west, comprised of Todzi, Odomi, Mempeasem, Adokor, and Sokpoo) and Lolobi (south-east, with Kumasi, Ashiambi, and Huyeasem). The names of the villages are usually prefixed by the traditional area: Akpafu-Todzi, Lolobi-Kumasi, and so on. A mountain ridge, or actually the river Dayi just east of it, provides a natural boundary between the two areas. The main dialectal division in Siwu corresponds to this geographic boundary.
Right in the center of the map lies Akpafu-Mempeasem, the village that is my home base while in the field. There is a foot path from there to Adokor (top left corner) which crosses the mountains (via Todzi) and a densely forested valley, until it reaches Sokpoo, where it changes into a 2nd class untarred road. It’s a very nice hike. And this map tells me I should also try to hike to Lolobi-Ashiambi one day — there is a footpath after all.
Below a picture of Akpafu-Todzi, the oldest town of Kawu and the seat of the paramount chief.
It’s that time again! The 60th edition of Anthroblogging’s very own blog carnival Four Stone Hearth is up at Middle Savagery. Check it out, there are lots of interesting posts.
The results of the AAA photo contest have just been announced. Congratulations to the winner, Peter Biella! Of my four submissions, one made it to the finals (best 20) and one to the semifinals (best 54). All 294 submissions will appear in the AAA Flickr gallery in due course; mine follow below.
My finalist was the following photo, titled “Kããã“:
Kyeei Yao, an age group leader, oversees a festival in Akpafu-Mempeasem, Volta Region, Ghana. The expensive draped cloth, the Ashanti-inspired wreath, the strings of beads which are handed down through the generations, and the digital wristwatch work together to remind us that culture is a moving target, always renewing and reshaping itself.
Kããã is a Siwu ideophone for ‘looking attentively’.
This picture was taken by my wife, Gijske de Boo, while I was busy videotaping the same events that Kyeei Yao is attending to. Together with the other 19 finalists it will be featured in the upcoming issue of Anthropology News; the finalists will also be hung as prints in the AAA office.
The photo that made the semifinals is called “The drum makers“:
Two artisans repair an atumpani drum in preparation for the funeral of a chief in Akpafu-Mempeasem, Volta Region, Ghana. A newly prepared antelope skin is fastened to the hard wood frame of the drum using a nylon cord and wooden pegs.
This picture was taken on the compound of Joseph (the man to the right), very close to my own home in Akpafu-Mempeasem. The earthen wall behind the men is Joe’s house, built of sun-hardened puddled mud like most houses in the village.
A submission which I thought was perhaps the most interesting even though it didn’t make it to the semifinals was “Bad Death ritual“:
A ‘bad death’ ritual in Ghana’s Volta Region. On the village cemetery, relatives of a man who died in a hunting accident listen anxiously to a woman who is possessed by the spirit of the deceased. The hunters, who have just brought the spirit home from the place of the accident deep in the jungle, keep their distance. Red is the colour of danger, black that of death.
This event took place right after a long and tiring march into the jungle and back, to pacify the spirit of a hunter killed in a tragic accident. I was able to take the picture from this perspective because I was dragged right in front of the possessed woman by Foster, one of my assistants, who had been my guide on the expedition. I also have an audio recording of her speech, which turned out to be a very interesting mix of prophesy and admonition. I’ll have to write more about that some time.
My final submission was the photo of Akpafu-Todzi which is also featured on this blog.
It’s a sunny day in Akpafu-Todzi, the old mountain citadel of the Mawu people in the central Volta Region of Ghana. The town, which has endured numerous sieges and which was the site of an ancient iron industry, is tranquil because this is the time for most people to engage in collaborative rice farming.
