OLAC Record oai:www.mpi.nl:1839_00-0000-0000-0021-6C9D-6

Metadata
Title:		Coconut and Kava
		Languages of Southwest Ambrym
Contributor (annotator):		von Prince
Contributor (consultant):		FT
Contributor (translator):		JM
Coverage:		Vanuatu
Date:		2009-09-23
Description:		This story relates how the coconut befriended the kava plant.
		The goal of this project is the documentation of the three major languages in the Southwest of the pacific island of Ambrym, Vanuatu. The major objectives include the creation of both academic and local dictionaries, grammatical descriptions of the three languages as well as extensive recordings of the languages with an emphasis on language use in connection with specific cultural pracitces such as sand drawings, dances and songs.
		The story starts with two chiefs arguing over who is the owner of a small island off the shore. They make a bet that if the island belongs to chief A, it will have sunk the next day, if it belongs to chief B, it will stay there. The next morning, the island has indeed sunk, proving chief A to be the rightful owner. On the island, however, there is a kava plant and now several other plants set out to befriend the kava and take it with them. But only the coconut manages to persuade the kava that they would make a good couple: The ground kava roots can be squeezed out with the cloth-like parts of the coconut palm and the shell of a coconut can serve as a receptacle for the kava drink. The story ends on a thoughtful note that today, this alliance is no longer respected as textiles have replaced the coconut cloth and cups take the place of coconut shells.
		The story was told by FT, recorded, annotated and translated into English by Kilu von Prince, with the help of speaker JM.
		This informant from Emyotungan is a fieldworker of the Cultural Center of Vanuatu and has been involved in attempts to conserve the language prior to the project. As many of the informants, he is very much concerned with the growing influence of Bislama on the language and is trying to avoid using loan words. His knowledge of stories and his commitment to preserve the language have been very helpful.
		Kilu von Prince has chosen the grammar of Daakaka to be the subject of her dissertation. Her purpose in the DoBeS project "Languages of West Ambrym" is to document and to help preserve the languages Daakaka and Ral kalein by collecting language data, establishing lexical databases and providing local communities with orthographies, dictionaries and printed accounts of traditional stories for use in education.
		JM has assisted at most of the transcriptions and translations of the recordings in Daakaka, being a very gifted informant. He has spend part of his education in the country's capital Vila.
Format:		audio/x-wav
		text/x-eaf+xml
Identifier:		oai:www.mpi.nl:1839_00-0000-0000-0021-6C9D-6
Publisher:		Manfred Krifka
		Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin
Subject:		Discourse
		Narrative
		Plants
		Daakaka language
		Dakaka
Subject (ISO639):		bpa
Type:		audio
OLAC Info
Archive:		The Language Archive at the MPI for Psycholinguistics
Description:		http://www.language-archives.org/archive/www.mpi.nl
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for OLAC format
GetRecord:		Pre-generated XML file
OAI Info
OaiIdentifier:		oai:www.mpi.nl:1839_00-0000-0000-0021-6C9D-6
DateStamp:		2017-02-14
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for simple DC format
Search Info
Citation:		FT (consultant); von Prince (annotator); JM (translator). 2009-09-23. Manfred Krifka.
Terms:		area_Pacific country_VU iso639_bpa
Inferred Metadata
Country:		Vanuatu
Area:		Pacific