Gunter Senft
Biographic Data
| ID | 184890 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gunter Senft |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gunter |
| FAMILY NAME | Senft |
| SIGNATURE | SENFT G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Society |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 251 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Ritual Communication
“… To grasp the native's point of view…” - A Plea for a Holistic Documentation of the Trobriand Islanders' Language, Culture and Cognition
In his famous introduction to his monograph “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” Bronislaw Malinowski (1922: 24f.) points out that a “collection of ethnographic statements, characteristic narratives, typical utterances, items of folk-lore and magical formulae has to be given as a corpus inscriptionum , as documents of native mentality”. This is one of the prerequisites to “grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his visio…
Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages
Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to …
Pragmatics and anthropology: The Trobriand Islanders’ ways of speaking
Bronislaw Malinowski – based on his experience during his field research on the Trobriand Islands – pointed out that language is first and foremost a tool for creating social bonds. It is a mode of behavior and the meaning of an utterance is constituted by its pragmatic function. Malinowski’s ideas finally led to the formation of the subdiscipline “anthropological linguistics”. This paper presents three observations of the Trobrianders’ attitude …
Bomiyoyeva and bomduvadova. Two Rare Structures on the Trobriand Islands Exclusively Reserved for Tabalu Chiefs
This article presents information about two so far undescribed buildings made by the Trobriand Islanders, the bomiyoyeva and the bomduvadova. These structures are connected to the highest-ranking chiefs living in Labai and Omarakana on Kiriwina Island. They highlight the power and eminence of these chiefs. After a brief report on the history of this project, the structure of the two houses, their function, and their use is described and informati…
“Masawa—bogeokwa si tuta!”: Cultural and Cognitive Implications of the Trobriand Islanders’ Gradual Loss of Their Knowledge of How to Make a Masawa Canoe
Pragmatics
This entry takes an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic pragmatics. It discusses how the meaning of utterances can only be understood in relation to overall cultural, social, and interpersonal contexts, as well as to culture-specific conventions and the speech events in which they are embedded. The entry discusses core issues of pragmatics such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, deixis, gesture, interaction strategies, ritual …
Tales from the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea: Psycholinguistic and anthropological linguistic analyses of tales told by Trobriand children and adults
This volume presents 22 tales from the Trobriand Islands told by children (boys between the age of 5 and 9 years) and adults. The monograph is motivated not only by the anthropological linguistic aim to present a broad and quite unique collection of tales with the thematic approach to illustrate which topics and themes constitute the content of the stories, but also by the psycholinguistic and textlinguistic questions of how children acquire line…
The Tuma Underworld of Love: Erotic and other narrative songs of the Trobriand Islanders and their spirits of the dead
The Trobriand Islanders' eschatological belief system explains what happens when someone dies. Bronislaw Malinowski described essentials of this eschatology in his articles "Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands" and "Myth in Primitive Psychology". There he also presented the Trobrianders' belief that a "baloma" can be reborn; he claimed that Trobrianders are unaware of the father's role as genitor. This volume presents a criti…
Talking about Color and Taste on the Trobriand Islands: A Diachronic Study
How stable is the lexicon for perceptual experiences? this article presents results on how the trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea talk about color and taste and whether this has changed over the years. comparing the results of research on color terms conducted in 1983 with data collected in 2008 revealed that many English color terms have been integrated into the Kilivila lexicon. Members of the younger generation with school education have …
Culture and language use
The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical, cognitive, grammatical, social, variational, interactional, or discursive angles, this second volume reviews basic topics and traditions that place language use in its cultural context. As emphasized in the …
Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski
he had an artist's power to create with great integrative capacity a world of his own
The Case: The Trobriand Islanders vs H. P. Grice. Kilivila and the Gricean Maxims of Quality and Manner
The Gricean maxim of Quality “Try to make your contribution one that is true” and his maxim of Manner “Be perspicuous” are not observed in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. Speakers of Kilivila metalinguistically differentiate registers of their language. One of these varieties is called biga sopa. This label can be glossed as “joking or lying speech, indirect speech, speech which is not vouched f…
Landscape terms and place names in the Trobriand Islands - the Kaile'una subset
Bronislaw Malinowski and Linguistic Pragmatics
In 1923 Bronislaw Malinowski repeated his claim for an "Ethnolinguistic theory" which he enforced 1920 in his first linguistic paper and which became the guideline for his "ethnographic theory of language." In 1997 the linguist William Foley published his monograph "Anthropological Linguistics-An Introduction"; and in the same year the anthropologist Alessandro Duranti published his monograph "Linguistic Anthropology." It seems that with the publ…
A biography in the strict sense of the term
Narrative as Social Practice: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions
Frames of spatial reference in Kilivila
Members of the MPI for Psycholinguistics are researching the interrelationship between language, cognition and the conceptualization of space in various languages. Research results show that there are three frames of spatial reference, the absolute, the relative, and the intrinsic frame of reference. This study first presents results of this research in general and then discusses the results for Kilivila. Speakers of this Austronesian language pr…
Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
Classificatory Particles in Kilivila
Senft examines the system of classificatory particles - the divisions of the noun lexicon into distinct classes - in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobrian Islanders of Papua New Guinea.
Enter and Exit in Kilivila
Based on film animation scenes and on an elicitation-task devised by members of the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group I elicited data on how the concepts ENTER and EXIT are expressed in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders. The paper presents the methodology used for data elicitation and the results for Kilivila. Kilivila can express ENTER and EXIT concepts either with specific lexicalized verbal expressions, or with…
Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
The first aim of this anthology is to illustrate the variety of resources that Austronesian and Papuan languages offer their speakers for referring to space. The languages here described are spread from Madagascar to Tonga, and there are many differences between them. They also offer a striking contrast to Indo-European languages, and call into question universalistic claims about human spatial concepts and spatial reference based solely on evide…
Classificatory Particles in Kilivila
Semantic Typology and Spatial Conceptualization
This project collected linguistic data for spatial relations across a typologically and genetically varied set of languages. In the linguistic analysis, we focus on the ways in which propositions may be functionally equivalent across the linguistic communities while nonetheless representing semantically quite distinctive frames of reference. Running nonlinguistic experiments on subjects from these language communities, we find that a population's…
Body and Mind in the Trobriand Islands
This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic data fit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them…
Semantic Typology and Spatial Conceptualization
This project collected linguistic data for spatial relations across a typologically and genetically varied set of languages. In the linguistic analysis, we focus on the ways in which propositions may be functionally equivalent across the linguistic communities while nonetheless representing semantically quite distinctive frames of reference. Running nonlinguistic experiments on subjects from these language communities, we find that a population's…
Functional syntax. Anaphora, discourse and empathy
Narrative as Social Practice: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions
Body and Mind in the Trobriand Islands
This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic data fit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them…
Landscape terms and place names in the Trobriand Islands - the Kaile'una subset
Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
The first aim of this anthology is to illustrate the variety of resources that Austronesian and Papuan languages offer their speakers for referring to space. The languages here described are spread from Madagascar to Tonga, and there are many differences between them. They also offer a striking contrast to Indo-European languages, and call into question universalistic claims about human spatial concepts and spatial reference based solely on evide…
Sign languages of Aboriginal Australia. Cultural, semiotic and communicative perspectives
How to tell - and understand - a dirty joke in Kilivila
Bronislaw Malinowski and Linguistic Pragmatics
In 1923 Bronislaw Malinowski repeated his claim for an "Ethnolinguistic theory" which he enforced 1920 in his first linguistic paper and which became the guideline for his "ethnographic theory of language." In 1997 the linguist William Foley published his monograph "Anthropological Linguistics-An Introduction"; and in the same year the anthropologist Alessandro Duranti published his monograph "Linguistic Anthropology." It seems that with the publ…
Talking about Color and Taste on the Trobriand Islands: A Diachronic Study
How stable is the lexicon for perceptual experiences? this article presents results on how the trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea talk about color and taste and whether this has changed over the years. comparing the results of research on color terms conducted in 1983 with data collected in 2008 revealed that many English color terms have been integrated into the Kilivila lexicon. Members of the younger generation with school education have …
Kitawa - A linguistic and aesthetic analysis of visual art in Melanesia
The Tuma Underworld of Love: Erotic and other narrative songs of the Trobriand Islanders and their spirits of the dead
The Trobriand Islanders' eschatological belief system explains what happens when someone dies. Bronislaw Malinowski described essentials of this eschatology in his articles "Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands" and "Myth in Primitive Psychology". There he also presented the Trobrianders' belief that a "baloma" can be reborn; he claimed that Trobrianders are unaware of the father's role as genitor. This volume presents a criti…
A biography in the strict sense of the term
Emic or etic or just another catch-22
InterGrammar
Emic or etic or just another catch-22
How to tell - and understand - a dirty joke in Kilivila
Under the tumtum tree: From nonsense to sense, a study in nonautomatic comprehension
Kilivila Color Terms
This paper documents the results of a study of color terms produced by Trobriand Islanders. Eleven color stimuli were presented to 60 informants in five different age-groups ranging from approximately 4 to 75 years. These informants, native speakers of Kilivila, live in Tauwema village on Kaileuna Island, one of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea. The paper first describes the method and the aims of the study. It then discusses the strateg…
Functional syntax. Anaphora, discourse and empathy
InterGrammar
Kilivila: The Language of the Trobriand Islanders
The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undesc…
Network Models to Describe the Kilivila Classifier System
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
Mahnreden auf den Trobriand Inseln Eine Fallstudie
Die Aussage, daß die Diskussion über »Theorie und Empirie«, über »Theorie und Praxis« — gerade auch wegen ihrer großen philosophisch-wissenschaftshistorischen Tradition — immer wieder notwendig und geboten ist, sollte eigentlich inzwischen dem Bereich des Trivialen angehören. Findet man allerdings in einem 1983 erschienenen »Lexikon linker Gemeinplätze« den Eintrag »Theorie und Praxis (Einheit von)«, dann stimmt einen das doch schon eher nachdenk…
Sign languages of Aboriginal Australia. Cultural, semiotic and communicative perspectives
Kitawa - A linguistic and aesthetic analysis of visual art in Melanesia
Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology
Introducing Linguistic Anthropology Communication and Speech Language and Culture The Structure of Language: Phonology Structure of Words and Sentences Language Origins Language Through Time Language Variation Language in Its Social Context Ethnography of Communication Nonverbal Communication and Writing Oral Folklore and Spoken Art Linguistic Anthropology in the Contemporary World
Ain't Misbehavin'? Trobriand Pragmatics and the Field Researcher's Opportunity to Put His (Or Her) Foot in It
Bulletin of the International Spring Figure Association. Vol. 1
Magic, missionaries and religion: Some observations from the Trobriand Islands
Classificatory Particles in Kilivila
Semantic Typology and Spatial Conceptualization
This project collected linguistic data for spatial relations across a typologically and genetically varied set of languages. In the linguistic analysis, we focus on the ways in which propositions may be functionally equivalent across the linguistic communities while nonetheless representing semantically quite distinctive frames of reference. Running nonlinguistic experiments on subjects from these language communities, we find that a population's…
Body and Mind in the Trobriand Islands
This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic data fit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them…
Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
Classificatory Particles in Kilivila
Senft examines the system of classificatory particles - the divisions of the noun lexicon into distinct classes - in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobrian Islanders of Papua New Guinea.
Enter and Exit in Kilivila
Based on film animation scenes and on an elicitation-task devised by members of the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group I elicited data on how the concepts ENTER and EXIT are expressed in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders. The paper presents the methodology used for data elicitation and the results for Kilivila. Kilivila can express ENTER and EXIT concepts either with specific lexicalized verbal expressions, or with…
Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
The first aim of this anthology is to illustrate the variety of resources that Austronesian and Papuan languages offer their speakers for referring to space. The languages here described are spread from Madagascar to Tonga, and there are many differences between them. They also offer a striking contrast to Indo-European languages, and call into question universalistic claims about human spatial concepts and spatial reference based solely on evide…
Frames of spatial reference in Kilivila
Members of the MPI for Psycholinguistics are researching the interrelationship between language, cognition and the conceptualization of space in various languages. Research results show that there are three frames of spatial reference, the absolute, the relative, and the intrinsic frame of reference. This study first presents results of this research in general and then discusses the results for Kilivila. Speakers of this Austronesian language pr…
Narrative as Social Practice: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions
A biography in the strict sense of the term
Philosophy (22 works) · Linguistics (21 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (12 works) · History (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works)