Bulmer, Ralph; Majnep, Ian Saem (2 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. Christopher Healey (illustrator). xlix+452 pp., illustrations, bibliography. This is a very special kind of animal book. The first author, Ian Saem Majnep, grew up on the edge of the cool upper montane forest, hunting, foraging and gardening and absorbing an immense body of traditional knowledge and belief about animals and wider Kalam natural history. Saem gives an insider s view of the wild mammals of his home area and shows how Kalam animal lore is woven into the customary life of his people. Some 53 species of wild terrestrial mammals (28 marsupials, 24 rodents and the wild New Guinea singing dog) are present in and near the Kaironk Valley. The Kalam high-order taxonomy of mammals is very different to that of Western zoologists. They divide terrestrial mammals into two broad categories: kmn game mammals , that is, the larger marsupials and giant rats, that are mainly arboreal and are men s prime game, and as small mammals and frogs , that are mainly ground-dwelling and are hunted chiefly by women. In over twenty chapters, Saem describes these animals, grouping them in terms of their appearance, habitats and behaviour. Over the past 50 years the Kalam have gone from pre-contact isolation to partial participation in the modern world. This shift has come at a price - much of the natural history knowledge that Saem records is in danger of being lost to younger Kalam, and to the scientific world. The book includes three major appendices detailing the mammals recorded in the Kalam region, their Kalam names, and the hundreds of plants that are of significance in the text.

Hardcover. Condition: New. 810 pp. The Kalam people live in the Bismarck and Schrader Ranges in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. They speak a language belonging to the Trans New Guinea family. This dictionary is one of the major products of a project of anthropological and linguistic research among the Kalam, begun in 1960 under the leadership of Ralph Bulmer, with collaboration between native speakers of Kalam, linguists, anthropologists and specialists in various biological disciplines. The dictionary is designed to be an ethnographic record, a kind of encyclopaedia of those elements of Kalam culture and society that are codified in language. The central part, the Kalam to English dictionary, provides definitions for about 14,000 distinct lexical units, grouped under about 6000 headwords. Definitions are often supplemented by ethnographic notes. Entries aim to systematically describe Kalam semantic categories and relations, for example, Kalam taxonomies of animals and plants, and kinship and colour categories, which differ markedly from those of European languages. The English-Kalam finder list provides a multi-level index, designed to enable the reader to find relevant entries and groupings of entries in the Kalam-English part, where fuller information is provided. Three major varieties of Kalam are represented. Two are sharply divergent regional dialects, known as Etp mnm and Ti mnm. The third is Kalam Pandanus language, which people use in the high mountain forest when harvesting mountain pandanus nuts and in certain other special contexts. A substantial grammar sketch is included.