Semantics of soul in the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language

The Group for Religious and Intellectual Traditions (GRIT) presents,
in association with the Endangered Languages Documentation, Theory and Application Group (ELDTA)

Semantics of soul in the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language

by Dr Jim Wafer

Tuesday 21 June 2011, 3.30-5pm

Cultural Collections, Auchmuty Library

Lancelot Threlkeld, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language (HRLM), recorded almost no indigenous texts, but devoted himself to scripture translation. From a linguist’s perspective this might perhaps be considered a deficiency, since it deprives us of the opportunity to understand HRLM verbal art as it was practiced by the speakers themselves. Nonetheless, it gives us the chance to investigate semantically HRLM’s approaches to the issues of human subjectivity with which the scriptures deal, and these are less likely to be encountered in indigenous stories and songs.Threlkeld uses two different words to translate soul: maray and minki. The first of these occurs more often as a translation of spirit, and the latter as a translation of sorrow, sympathy, repentance. Both words are polysemous in HRLM, and the present paper will demonstrate the range of their allusions, in the context of Threlkelds translations, and attempt to draw some broader inferences about the HRLM understanding of subjective processes.

Dr Jim Wafer is a member of the Endangered Languages Documentation, Theory and Application (ELDTA) group at the University of Newcastle, and has worked with Australian Aboriginal languages for the past 35 years. He is currently collaborating with Professor Hilary Carey on an edition of Lancelot Threlkeld’s translations into the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language.

All interested persons are welcome. Refreshments will be provided.

For further information about GRIT’s aims, outcomes and contact details please visit:
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/research/groups/group-for-religious-and-intellectual-traditions/

GRIT Seminars 2011

GRIT – Group for Religious and Intellectual Traditions

2011 Semester 1 Seminars

Cultural Collections Reading Room, Auchmuty Library

Professor Hilary Carey

Tuesday 19 April 3.30-5pm

Prof. Hilary Carey will speak on God’s Empire: Religion and the Settler Revolution

Prof. Carey’s talk will introduce her new book, God’s Empire, where she charts Britain’s nineteenth-century transformation from Protestant nation to free Christian empire through the history of the colonial missionary movement. This wide-ranging reassessment of the religious character of the second British empire provides a clear account of the promotional strategies of the major churches and church parties which worked to plant settler Christianity in British domains.

Tuesday 24 May 3.30-5pm

Dr. Tim Stanley, The Return of the Scroll: From Codex to Google

Dr Tim Stanley

Search is a feature on almost every software application we use today, and it explains why a much older information technology has returned along with it, the scroll. Of course the scroll does not return in the precise manner as the ancient papyrus rolls of antiquity, but rather, it gives a crucial clue to the longer history of information technology which precedes our digital era. In other words, if we are to understand the return of the scroll in our digital screens today we must look back to the rise of the bound pages of the codex roughly 1800 years ago.

Tuesday 21 June 3.30-5pm

Dr. Jim Wafer, Semantics of “soul” in the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language

Dr Jim Wafer

Lancelot Threlkeld, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language (HRLM), recorded almost no indigenous texts, but devoted himself to scripture translation. From a linguist’s perspective this might perhaps be considered a deficiency, since it deprives us of the opportunity to understand HRLM verbal art as it was practiced by the speakers themselves. Nonetheless, it gives us the chance to investigate semantically HRLM’s approaches to the issues of human subjectivity with which the scriptures deal, and these are less likely to be encountered in indigenous stories and songs. A reply to Dr Wafer’s paper will be delivered by Mr Raymond Kelly, Associate Lecturer at the Wollotuka Institute.

Download a PDF version of the schedule