Category Archives: Fieldwork

A hand drawn map of Kawu

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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

Geography: Extent of Kawu

Geography: Extent of Kawu. By John Atsu, 2003 [click to enlarge]

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.

Akpafu-Todzi seen from mount Ɔgagɛ̃

Akpafu-Todzi seen from mount Ɔgagɛ̃ , facing north, September 2008.
In the valley lies Akpafu-Odomi.

Finalist in the AAA Photo contest

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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.

Bad Death

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.

Phonology Assistant

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Phonology Assistant (PA) is a free phonology tool by SIL that (as of version 3.0) works interactively with the data stored in Toolbox, Fieldworks Language Explorer, and Speech Analyzer. It automates many of the cumbersome and repetitive tasks associated with doing phonological analysis, and it does so in a most systematic and revealing way. The things it does more or less automatically include drawing up a phone inventory; computing relative frequencies of phones; computing syllable structures; generating phonotactic charts for every conceivable combination of positions, phones, or features; and finding minimal pairs along various dimensions. A powerful search function allows the user to search for phonetic patterns within specified environments.

A review of Phonology Assistant by me was published yesterday in Language Documentation & Conservation. It’s a tremendously useful tool — anyone who has ever been faced with the task of doing phonological analysis will know that it can grow enormously complex, especially if one wants to be comprehensive and look not just at simple positional distribution (initial, medial, final) but also at occurrence in different environments (intervocalic, before voiced fricatives, after a nasal consonant, etc.). PA assists in these household chores, and does it all with an interface so smooth you wouldn’t notice the conceptual complexity of the tasks. Check out the review (pdf) or the PA website.

  1. Dingemanse, Mark. 2008. Review of Phonology Assistant 3.0.1. Language Documentation & Conservation 2, no. 2: 325-331. doi:http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4350.  

Semantic cookies

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Semantic cookies are sold in Akpafu-Mempeasem, central Volta Region, Ghana (among other places)

Fieldwork sessions on lexical semantics have become a lot easier since I found these cookies. I came across them in a small and dusty store in Akpafu-Mempeasem, my fieldwork hometown of all places.

Semantic cookies are made in Turkey by a company called BiFa Bisküvi. As BiFa they certainly have a knack (or failing that, a dictionary) for coining strange product names; other products of theirs are called Appeal, Effect, Talent, and Wisdom, to name just a few.

Kanananana

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There are several ideophones in Siwu that have to do with silence. Here are a few examples:

mì-lo kanananana!
2PL-be.silent IDPH
(y’all) be silent kanananana!
a-rɛ kpooo-o?
2SG-sleep IDPH-Q
did you have a sound sleep?
lò-to lò-karɛ ɔ itɔ̃me a-ɣɛ à-to à-nyɔ mɛ gbigbini-gbi
1SG-PROG 1SG-ask 2SG:O message 2SG-stand 2SG-PROG 2SG-look 1SG:O IDPH-REDUP1
I’m asking you a question and you are standing looking at me gbigbinigbi!
ɔ̀-si mùnùmùnù
3SG-sit IDPH
he just sits mùnùmùnù (sickly without talking)

The implications of these four ideophones are different. The first one is perhaps the most general; it is often heard in requests for silence (esp. in the plural), but I’ve also heard it used to talk about the tranquility of the town. The second one, kpoo, is most commonly heard in the reply to the morning greeting lò yá mì ‘I greet you (pl.)’. It has a positive connotation of nocturnal silence and sound sleep. The other two both carry negative connonations: gbigbinigbi evokes a sulking silence, mùnùmùnù is silence of a more dim-witted, sickly type.

All this by way of announcing a scheduled period of radio silence during my two-month fieldtrip to Ghana from July to September 15th. I’ll be giving talks at the 26th West African Languages Conference in Winneba and the 2nd International Workshop on the GTM languages. The rest of the time I will be in Kawu, transcribing beautiful and sparkling conversation full of ideophones. In between times I may be able to post some snippets, but don’t expect too much — everything will be pretty much kanananana here. See you in September!

The Hidbap language of PNG

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Mt. Iso in PNG, 12 miles southwest of Sumo, east of the Catalina River. Diuwe is spoken between sea level and the first isoline at 100m, Hidbap between the first and the second isolines.

This week, the language of the week at Anggarrgoon is DIY, also known as Diuwe. Claire Bowern, noting that the only comment in the Ethnologue entry of the language is the terse and rather mysterious ‘Below 100 meters’, claims that the phonology of DIY shows an effect of altitude on air stream mechanisms. I thought I would shed some light on this curious situation by profiling Hidbap, a language related to Diuwe.

Hidbap is Diuwe’s closest neighbour both geographically and phylogenetically. It is a language spoken above 100m but below 200m in the same area as Diuwe, that is, 12 miles southwest of Sumo, east of the Catalina River. Like Diuwe, it has exactly 100 speakers. The languages are quite closely related, though there is no mutual intelligibility due to the presence of a large bundle of isoglosses at the 100m isoline. Speakers of either language avoid crossing into each other’s territories at all cost (see below). Continue reading →

Fieldwork snippet: What ideophones do

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A while ago I spent some time with a language assistant to work through a list of the Siwu ideophones I collected so far. There were some interesting metalinguistic comments on the function of ideophones. Here are three representative exchanges (MD = me, SA = assistant, MA = his daughter):

1

MD
What is gawungawun?
SA
Gawungawun… they are all the same thing [referring to a few previous ones, also ways of walking]
MD
Aha, no there must, no, they cannot be the same — they are different words!

SA
They are, eh, but what… it’s only describing how the person is walking [shrugs shoulders]
MD
yeah

2

MD
What about gbadaragbadara?
SA
Gbadaragbadaraa [laughs] It’s something… its just the s… its similar.
MD
Similar, yes. Not the same, but similar, uhuh.
SA
Yeah, similar. Let me see, gbadaragbadara or gadaragadara, that means uh… he is not serious or he is something like he is drunk…
MA
[calling from the kitchen] It’s just an adjective that we are using to describe the way the person is walking
MD
Eheh
SA
Yah

3

MD
What about hiriririri
SA
Oh… no… [doesn’t recognize the word]
MD
ki … rotate [points to the fan in the background]
SA
ite ki hiriririri, aa, okay, okay… yeah it’s just… no… so … just … you are just describing how it is turning [displaying an attitude of doubt as to whether this word has any use at all]
MD
yes, yeah
SA
ite ki hiriririri [it-PROG rotate hiririri] (makes rotating gesture)

The mildly dismissive attitude of SA is quite interesting, though not shared by most other speakers — I think it has to do with a certain level of education and perhaps some other sociolinguistic factors. For now I just want to draw attention to another aspect of these metalinguistic comments.

SA is saying that it is ‘just describing how it is turning’. That implies a difference between the statements ‘it is turning’ and ‘it is turning hiriririri’. In the first one, you do not specify how it is turning (i.e. which sensation it brings about); you merely describe the event that is going on. In the second one, you do more than this: an expressive depiction is added to the analytical description of the scene. This is one of the ways in which ideophones ‘pepper’ everyday speech in Siwu.

References

  1. Clark, Herbert H, and Richard J Gerrig. 1990. Quotations as Demonstrations. Language 66, no. 4:764-805.
  2. Walton, Kendall L. 1973. Pictures and Make-Believe. The Philosophical Review 82, no. 3:283-319.

Fieldwork snippet: What is the difference between these words?

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Hello from the field! I’m currently on a five-week trip to Kawu in the beautiful Volta Region, eastern Ghana (see the picture to the right), hence the irregular posting schedule. In line with my main business here, I will share some notes on doing fieldwork.

MD
What about gligli?
SA
Gligli is ‘round’
MD
But what about minimini?
SA
Minimini is also round. Uh… when you say giligili, it is something like an oval form, oval… [Avoiding eye-contact, drawing an egg-like shape on the table]… uhuh… but minimini … is errrr…. round.

One thing I noticed during fieldwork sessions is that if pressed to explain the difference between two words, people choose one of three strategies. The first strategy (A) is to insist that the words are just the same, that there really is no difference. This strategy is the most common perhaps, but it is easily defeated by pointing to the fact that the words are clearly different, so that there must be some difference.

The two remaining strategies are (B) making up a difference on the spot in the hope that I will faithfully write it down so that we can go on to the next item; and (C) honestly probing for the difference by imagining several different scenarios and trying out various utterances and gestures. The answers produced by those who follow strategy C are extremely valuable, because they provide lots of additional contextual information. This also makes it quite easy to distinguish strategies B and C; people following strategy B will be unnaturally quick in giving an answer and will not want to explain much more about it.

Note that it does not help to penalize assistants for using strategy B (e.g. by pointing out inconsistencies). They will only feel more uncomfortable. The best response is usually to do what they hope you will do: swiftly going on to the next item (don’t forget to leave a mark so that you can revisit the problem!). Smiling friendly and making clear that you are taking them seriously helps in restoring their peace of mind and will make strategy C more readily available to them.

Unfortunately, there are no language-helpers who will only ever employ strategy C. When a session has been going on for long, or when it gets all too inquisitive, there is a tendency to switch to strategy B even among the most helpful and sharp assistants. Take for example the following exchange between me and SA, who is normally quite particular about giving the ‘right’ meaning of words: Continue reading →

Remnants of some ancient tribal idiom: deciphering the oldest Siwu to appear in print

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The Akpafus must immediately strike even the most casual observer as a people differing from the surrounding tribes. Their huts are flat roofed (with mud) instead of the conical grass-roofed houses of the Ewe race. Their language is not Ewe, but a remnant of some ancient tribal idiom. (Rattray 1916:431)

The town of Akpafu around 1905
The town of Akpafu one century ago

Having been a small and quite isolated language for centuries, Siwu was relatively late to attract attention from outsiders. Europeans in search for gold, slaves, and other goods for the most part stayed near the coast. Halfway the nineteenth century, German firms (looking for cheap land) and missionary organizations (looking for converts) started to explore the Hinterland and it is in this period that the name Akpafu turns up for the first time in the historical record. (If you wonder about the etymology, see here.) The earliest mention I found so far is a photo by the German missionary photographer Christian Hornberger, titled Fetischpriester in Akpafu and dated 1864 (see below). Still, it took some time before Akpafu became more generally known, due in part to its remoteness, but probably also because of the turmoil caused by the Asante-British wars.

Fetischpriester in Akpafu (Hornberger, 1864; sign. 529)
‘Fetischpriester in Akpafu’ (Christian Hornberger, 1864)
Bremen Mission Archives 7.1025-0529

Rudolph Plehn, Beiträge zur Völkerkunde des Togo-Gebietes (1898)

Only when the area became part of the German colony of Togoland (1884-1914), more information became available. The earliest ethnographic source is a study by Rudolf Plehn, published as his dissertation in Halle in 1898 and titled Beiträge zur Völkerkunde des Togo-Gebietes (Contributions to the ethnography of the Togo area). It is here that we find the oldest fragment of Siwu to appear in print, and in this posting I’ll report on an attempt to decipher it. Continue reading →