Aung Si
Biographic Data
| ID | 672525 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aung Si |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aung |
| FAMILY NAME | Si |
| SIGNATURE | SI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cologne |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8115-9176 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Socially Driven Variation in Noun Insertions
Aims and Objectives: The status of insertions in the context of language mixing has been debated for some decades. This paper contributes new data by investigating the language of plural marking on English-origin nouns in a Hindi matrix in written and spoken Hindi–English in India. The central question was whether insertions should be regarded as loanwords or code-switches. Approach: Google search results were tallied out for Hindi- and English-p…
The question of universals in ethnobiological nomenclature
The classification and naming of plants and animals is said to follow a number of “universal” constraints cross-linguistically. While these constraints are generally accepted in the literature, few have been rigorously tested with a large language sample. In particular, the languages of mainland southeast Asia appear to have been neglected in such endeavours, even though it is common knowledge that some key constraints are violated in this region…
The Effects of Remoteness and Forest Cover on Bird Knowledge in Two Language Communities of Myanmar
The link between language loss and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) loss in small language communities is well documented, but the causal mechanisms are difficult to tease apart. We investigate the transmission of bird knowledge in two ethnic minority communities of Myanmar, Lainong and Danu, which differ greatly in their degree of remoteness and the level of local forest cover. Older and younger native speakers from numerous villages were …
Age and Gender-Related Variation in Plant and Animal Naming Ability in the Soliga/Solega Community of Southern Karnataka, India
It is widely acknowledged that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is an endangered part of the cultural heritage of many Indigenous communities worldwide. It has also been shown that TEK can vary within a community according to variables such as the age and gender of individuals. We combine the above concepts and use intra-community variation in the ability to name local plants and animals to identify disruptions in the transmission of TEK am…
The Trees Above
We adopt an ethnolinguistic approach to examine cultural practices involving trees in two Indigenous communities: the Ngarinyin Aborigines of Australia and the Solega/Soliga of India. On the basis of two separate types of data and methods, we demonstrate that the lives of the Ngarinyin and Solega are intimately connected with the trees surrounding them. Mentions of trees in Ngarinyin creation narratives are numerous and varied and show that trees…
Variation in the bird-name lexicon in Qaqet (East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea)
Birds are of great cultural importance to the Qaqet-Baining people of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. In this paper, we investigate whether there are differences in people’s ability to name common birds in the local environment, and focus primarily on the variables gender and location. We showed pictures of local birds to small groups of Qaqet speakers in two villages—one located in an area of significant deforestation—and asked them…
Inter-individual differences in Hindi–English code-switching
Aims and objectives: Variationist studies on code-switching (CS) have focused on community-level differences driven by variables such as age, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. Studies on inter-individual variation that make use of naturalistic speech need to be prioritised, especially in countries with large, diverse populations, such as India. This article presents a quantitative analysis of the Hindi–English CS (HECS) patterns among speaker…
Patterns in fish naming ability in two fishing communities of Myanmar
Background To date, there is little reliable information on the fish names used by two fishing communities of Myanmar, namely Intha (Inle Lake) and Rakhine (Bay of Bengal). Moreover, there have been no systematic studies on the distribution of fish-related traditional knowledge in these two communities. As there can be high levels of intra-community variation in traditional ecological knowledge, it is important to investigate this variation along…
A quantitative analysis of age-related differences in Hindi–English code-switching
Aims and objectives: Numerical indices developed by Guzman et al. that helped characterize code-switching (CS) patterns in Spanish–English bilingual corpora, were tested on a Hindi–English bilingual corpus. Two main research questions were addressed: first, how does Hindi–English compare with Spanish–English, and second, are there measurable differences in broad CS patterns between older and younger speakers? Methodology: Television interviews of…
Patterns in the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge
BackgroundThe loss of traditional ecological knowledge in endangered language communities is a cause of concern worldwide. Given the state of current knowledge, it is difficult to say whether language and TEK transmission levels are correlated, i.e. whether the erosion of one is accompanied by erosion of the other. This case study, focusing on a small Indigenous language from northern Australia, represents a first step towards a systematic invest…
Solega defenestration
Based on original fieldwork, this paper discusses reported speech and thought constructions in Solega (Dravidian). Following McGregor (1994) we claim that reported speech can only be comprehensively characterised if it is identified as a syntactic construction in its own right, a construction we label a framing construction. In natural discourse, elements of the framing construction, particularly clauses referring to the reporting event, may be l…
Flora–Fauna Loanwords in Arnhem Land and Beyond—An Ethnobiological Approach
Borrowing is said to be a pervasive phenomenon among Australian languages, particularly in the domains of flora–fauna and material culture. In-depth studies of borrowing in individual languages or small groups of languages exist, as do quantitative analyses covering selected vocabulary items across a large number of languages. To date, however, there have not been any comprehensive surveys of the flora–fauna inventories of several languages at on…
Stingless Honeybee (Sugarbag) Naming, Identification and Conceptualization in Arnhem Land—A Lexicographic Approach
The stingless honeybees of Arnhem Land (sugarbag) are a culturally important, but hard-to-identify group of insects. As a result, the dictionary definitions of these creatures in a range of Australian languages tend to lack precise scientific identifications, while also containing inaccurate or contradictory ethnobiological information. This paper attempts to address this problem by investigating honeybee terms and their semantics in 10 languages…
Edible Insect Larvae in Kaytetye
Insects have traditionally constituted an important source of food in many cultures, but changes in dietary practices and other lifestyle traits are threatening the transmission of insect-related knowledge and vocabulary to younger generations of Indigenous Australians. This paper describes the rich cultural and culinary traditions surrounding an important insect group, namely a class of edible insect larvae consumed by a desert community in cent…
The Potential for Flora-Fauna Wordlists to Contribute to Biodiversity Research
Traditional ecological knowledge recorded as part of a language documentation program can include valuable information on the presence or absence of plant and animal species in a given locality. Such data have the potential to inform biodiversity surveys at a local or landscape scale. In this study, bird names were recorded in six languages spoken around the town of Aungban in Shan State, Myanmar. A checklist of local birds was first compiled usi…
The Importance of Insects in Australian Aboriginal Society
Insects and their products have long been used in Indigenous Australian societies as food, medicine and construction material, and given prominent roles in myths, traditional songs and ceremonies. However, much of the available information on the uses of insects in Australia remains anecdotal. In this essay, we review published dictionaries of Aboriginal languages spoken in many parts of Australia, to provide an overview of the Indigenous names a…
Solega Place Names and Their Ecological Significance
Place names in the Dravidian language Solega are analyzed, along with the nature of their referents. We discuss the lexicon of landscape terms, as these figure prominently in place name formation. Solega toponyms encode much information on not only cultural practices and religious traditions, but also forest ecology, with particular focus on plant and animal species distributions. Individual trees of great cultural or utilitarian significance are…
Aspects of Honeybee Natural History According to the Solega
Honeybees and their products are highly prized by many cultures around the world, and as a result, indigenous communities have come to possess rich and detailed knowledge of the biology of these important insects. In this paper, I present an in-depth investigation into some aspects of honeybee natural history, as related to me by the Solega people of southern India. The Solega recognize, name, and exploit four honeybee species, and are well aware…
Solega Ethno-Ornithology
Birds figure prominently in the traditional knowledge systems of many cultures by virtue of the diverse ways in which humans perceive these creatures, as religious totems, crop pests, food items, sentinels, guides and heralds, to name a few. This preliminary documentation of the traditional ornithological knowledge of the Solega people of southern India discusses the difficulties involved in obtaining a standard set of names that has the consensu…
A diachronic investigation of Hindi–English code-switching, using Bollywood film scripts
Code-switching (CS) between an Indian language and (Indian) English is, and has long been, a normal feature of everyday speech in urban Indian society. Although much has been written about the status and role of English, and about the sociological variables associated with English usage in India, there have been, to date, no studies explicitly investigating changes in CS patterns over time. Bollywood movies are a rich source of information on the…
The Importance of Insects in Australian Aboriginal Society
Insects and their products have long been used in Indigenous Australian societies as food, medicine and construction material, and given prominent roles in myths, traditional songs and ceremonies. However, much of the available information on the uses of insects in Australia remains anecdotal. In this essay, we review published dictionaries of Aboriginal languages spoken in many parts of Australia, to provide an overview of the Indigenous names a…
Patterns in the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge
BackgroundThe loss of traditional ecological knowledge in endangered language communities is a cause of concern worldwide. Given the state of current knowledge, it is difficult to say whether language and TEK transmission levels are correlated, i.e. whether the erosion of one is accompanied by erosion of the other. This case study, focusing on a small Indigenous language from northern Australia, represents a first step towards a systematic invest…
Solega Place Names and Their Ecological Significance
Place names in the Dravidian language Solega are analyzed, along with the nature of their referents. We discuss the lexicon of landscape terms, as these figure prominently in place name formation. Solega toponyms encode much information on not only cultural practices and religious traditions, but also forest ecology, with particular focus on plant and animal species distributions. Individual trees of great cultural or utilitarian significance are…
Patterns in fish naming ability in two fishing communities of Myanmar
Background To date, there is little reliable information on the fish names used by two fishing communities of Myanmar, namely Intha (Inle Lake) and Rakhine (Bay of Bengal). Moreover, there have been no systematic studies on the distribution of fish-related traditional knowledge in these two communities. As there can be high levels of intra-community variation in traditional ecological knowledge, it is important to investigate this variation along…
Aspects of Honeybee Natural History According to the Solega
Honeybees and their products are highly prized by many cultures around the world, and as a result, indigenous communities have come to possess rich and detailed knowledge of the biology of these important insects. In this paper, I present an in-depth investigation into some aspects of honeybee natural history, as related to me by the Solega people of southern India. The Solega recognize, name, and exploit four honeybee species, and are well aware…
Age and Gender-Related Variation in Plant and Animal Naming Ability in the Soliga/Solega Community of Southern Karnataka, India
It is widely acknowledged that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is an endangered part of the cultural heritage of many Indigenous communities worldwide. It has also been shown that TEK can vary within a community according to variables such as the age and gender of individuals. We combine the above concepts and use intra-community variation in the ability to name local plants and animals to identify disruptions in the transmission of TEK am…
Flora–Fauna Loanwords in Arnhem Land and Beyond—An Ethnobiological Approach
Borrowing is said to be a pervasive phenomenon among Australian languages, particularly in the domains of flora–fauna and material culture. In-depth studies of borrowing in individual languages or small groups of languages exist, as do quantitative analyses covering selected vocabulary items across a large number of languages. To date, however, there have not been any comprehensive surveys of the flora–fauna inventories of several languages at on…
Edible Insect Larvae in Kaytetye
Insects have traditionally constituted an important source of food in many cultures, but changes in dietary practices and other lifestyle traits are threatening the transmission of insect-related knowledge and vocabulary to younger generations of Indigenous Australians. This paper describes the rich cultural and culinary traditions surrounding an important insect group, namely a class of edible insect larvae consumed by a desert community in cent…
The Potential for Flora-Fauna Wordlists to Contribute to Biodiversity Research
Traditional ecological knowledge recorded as part of a language documentation program can include valuable information on the presence or absence of plant and animal species in a given locality. Such data have the potential to inform biodiversity surveys at a local or landscape scale. In this study, bird names were recorded in six languages spoken around the town of Aungban in Shan State, Myanmar. A checklist of local birds was first compiled usi…
A diachronic investigation of Hindi–English code-switching, using Bollywood film scripts
Code-switching (CS) between an Indian language and (Indian) English is, and has long been, a normal feature of everyday speech in urban Indian society. Although much has been written about the status and role of English, and about the sociological variables associated with English usage in India, there have been, to date, no studies explicitly investigating changes in CS patterns over time. Bollywood movies are a rich source of information on the…
Solega Ethno-Ornithology
Birds figure prominently in the traditional knowledge systems of many cultures by virtue of the diverse ways in which humans perceive these creatures, as religious totems, crop pests, food items, sentinels, guides and heralds, to name a few. This preliminary documentation of the traditional ornithological knowledge of the Solega people of southern India discusses the difficulties involved in obtaining a standard set of names that has the consensu…
Aspects of Honeybee Natural History According to the Solega
Honeybees and their products are highly prized by many cultures around the world, and as a result, indigenous communities have come to possess rich and detailed knowledge of the biology of these important insects. In this paper, I present an in-depth investigation into some aspects of honeybee natural history, as related to me by the Solega people of southern India. The Solega recognize, name, and exploit four honeybee species, and are well aware…
Solega Place Names and Their Ecological Significance
Place names in the Dravidian language Solega are analyzed, along with the nature of their referents. We discuss the lexicon of landscape terms, as these figure prominently in place name formation. Solega toponyms encode much information on not only cultural practices and religious traditions, but also forest ecology, with particular focus on plant and animal species distributions. Individual trees of great cultural or utilitarian significance are…
The Importance of Insects in Australian Aboriginal Society
Insects and their products have long been used in Indigenous Australian societies as food, medicine and construction material, and given prominent roles in myths, traditional songs and ceremonies. However, much of the available information on the uses of insects in Australia remains anecdotal. In this essay, we review published dictionaries of Aboriginal languages spoken in many parts of Australia, to provide an overview of the Indigenous names a…
The Potential for Flora-Fauna Wordlists to Contribute to Biodiversity Research
Traditional ecological knowledge recorded as part of a language documentation program can include valuable information on the presence or absence of plant and animal species in a given locality. Such data have the potential to inform biodiversity surveys at a local or landscape scale. In this study, bird names were recorded in six languages spoken around the town of Aungban in Shan State, Myanmar. A checklist of local birds was first compiled usi…
Edible Insect Larvae in Kaytetye
Insects have traditionally constituted an important source of food in many cultures, but changes in dietary practices and other lifestyle traits are threatening the transmission of insect-related knowledge and vocabulary to younger generations of Indigenous Australians. This paper describes the rich cultural and culinary traditions surrounding an important insect group, namely a class of edible insect larvae consumed by a desert community in cent…
Stingless Honeybee (Sugarbag) Naming, Identification and Conceptualization in Arnhem Land—A Lexicographic Approach
The stingless honeybees of Arnhem Land (sugarbag) are a culturally important, but hard-to-identify group of insects. As a result, the dictionary definitions of these creatures in a range of Australian languages tend to lack precise scientific identifications, while also containing inaccurate or contradictory ethnobiological information. This paper attempts to address this problem by investigating honeybee terms and their semantics in 10 languages…
Solega defenestration
Based on original fieldwork, this paper discusses reported speech and thought constructions in Solega (Dravidian). Following McGregor (1994) we claim that reported speech can only be comprehensively characterised if it is identified as a syntactic construction in its own right, a construction we label a framing construction. In natural discourse, elements of the framing construction, particularly clauses referring to the reporting event, may be l…
Flora–Fauna Loanwords in Arnhem Land and Beyond—An Ethnobiological Approach
Borrowing is said to be a pervasive phenomenon among Australian languages, particularly in the domains of flora–fauna and material culture. In-depth studies of borrowing in individual languages or small groups of languages exist, as do quantitative analyses covering selected vocabulary items across a large number of languages. To date, however, there have not been any comprehensive surveys of the flora–fauna inventories of several languages at on…
Patterns in the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge
BackgroundThe loss of traditional ecological knowledge in endangered language communities is a cause of concern worldwide. Given the state of current knowledge, it is difficult to say whether language and TEK transmission levels are correlated, i.e. whether the erosion of one is accompanied by erosion of the other. This case study, focusing on a small Indigenous language from northern Australia, represents a first step towards a systematic invest…
A quantitative analysis of age-related differences in Hindi–English code-switching
Aims and objectives: Numerical indices developed by Guzman et al. that helped characterize code-switching (CS) patterns in Spanish–English bilingual corpora, were tested on a Hindi–English bilingual corpus. Two main research questions were addressed: first, how does Hindi–English compare with Spanish–English, and second, are there measurable differences in broad CS patterns between older and younger speakers? Methodology: Television interviews of…
Variation in the bird-name lexicon in Qaqet (East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea)
Birds are of great cultural importance to the Qaqet-Baining people of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. In this paper, we investigate whether there are differences in people’s ability to name common birds in the local environment, and focus primarily on the variables gender and location. We showed pictures of local birds to small groups of Qaqet speakers in two villages—one located in an area of significant deforestation—and asked them…
Inter-individual differences in Hindi–English code-switching
Aims and objectives: Variationist studies on code-switching (CS) have focused on community-level differences driven by variables such as age, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. Studies on inter-individual variation that make use of naturalistic speech need to be prioritised, especially in countries with large, diverse populations, such as India. This article presents a quantitative analysis of the Hindi–English CS (HECS) patterns among speaker…
Patterns in fish naming ability in two fishing communities of Myanmar
Background To date, there is little reliable information on the fish names used by two fishing communities of Myanmar, namely Intha (Inle Lake) and Rakhine (Bay of Bengal). Moreover, there have been no systematic studies on the distribution of fish-related traditional knowledge in these two communities. As there can be high levels of intra-community variation in traditional ecological knowledge, it is important to investigate this variation along…
Age and Gender-Related Variation in Plant and Animal Naming Ability in the Soliga/Solega Community of Southern Karnataka, India
It is widely acknowledged that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is an endangered part of the cultural heritage of many Indigenous communities worldwide. It has also been shown that TEK can vary within a community according to variables such as the age and gender of individuals. We combine the above concepts and use intra-community variation in the ability to name local plants and animals to identify disruptions in the transmission of TEK am…
The Trees Above
We adopt an ethnolinguistic approach to examine cultural practices involving trees in two Indigenous communities: the Ngarinyin Aborigines of Australia and the Solega/Soliga of India. On the basis of two separate types of data and methods, we demonstrate that the lives of the Ngarinyin and Solega are intimately connected with the trees surrounding them. Mentions of trees in Ngarinyin creation narratives are numerous and varied and show that trees…
The question of universals in ethnobiological nomenclature
The classification and naming of plants and animals is said to follow a number of “universal” constraints cross-linguistically. While these constraints are generally accepted in the literature, few have been rigorously tested with a large language sample. In particular, the languages of mainland southeast Asia appear to have been neglected in such endeavours, even though it is common knowledge that some key constraints are violated in this region…
The Effects of Remoteness and Forest Cover on Bird Knowledge in Two Language Communities of Myanmar
The link between language loss and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) loss in small language communities is well documented, but the causal mechanisms are difficult to tease apart. We investigate the transmission of bird knowledge in two ethnic minority communities of Myanmar, Lainong and Danu, which differ greatly in their degree of remoteness and the level of local forest cover. Older and younger native speakers from numerous villages were …
Socially Driven Variation in Noun Insertions
Aims and Objectives: The status of insertions in the context of language mixing has been debated for some decades. This paper contributes new data by investigating the language of plural marking on English-origin nouns in a Hindi matrix in written and spoken Hindi–English in India. The central question was whether insertions should be regarded as loanwords or code-switches. Approach: Google search results were tallied out for Hindi- and English-p…
Biology (15 works) · Ecology (13 works) · Geography (13 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Anthropology (6 works) · Animal and Plant Science Education (5 works)