Children of the sago: Muyu texts

Alexander Zahrer

Children of the sago: Muyu texts

Authors

Alexander Zahrer

Synopsis

This collection of ten texts offers a unique glimpse into the language and culture of the Muyu, a Papuan people living in the heart of New Guinea. It features narratives from six storytellers, all of which have been transcribed, translated, and linguistically annotated.

The presentation follows a two-part structure: first, a parallel-text format with Muyu and English arranged in columns; second, an interlinearized version for detailed linguistic analysis. The texts revolve around two central themes—myths of origin and accounts of encounters with animals.

A brief introduction to the Muyu language and its speakers precedes the texts, providing essential context for readers from both linguistic and anthropological backgrounds.

Author Biography

Alexander Zahrer

Alexander Zahrer works at the University of Münster in Germany. His research focuses on languages spoken in West New Guinea, where he is working on documentation and description of several languages from the Trans New Guinea family. Besides that, he is interested in typology, morphosyntax, complex predicates, prosody and statistical modelling in linguistics.