Clans, spirits, land and food: Kilmeri texts

Claudia Gerstner-Link

Clans, spirits, land and food: Kilmeri texts

Authors

Claudia Gerstner-Link

Synopsis

This collection of Kilmeri texts provides insight into the language and culture of the Kilmeri people in northern Papua New Guinea. Six narrators tell stories about their clans, their land, and its food supply during the ‘golden age’ as well as today. Life in the bush is never easy, as evil spirits often hinder people's efforts to find food. Readers will be introduced to a variety of genres, including legendary deeds of Kilmeri heroes, old village life, contemporary village life, and other oral traditions. All texts are presented in a parallel text version (Kilmeri-English) and in an interlinearised version. Each text is preceded by an introduction that describes the anthropological background and context of the story.

Author Biography

Claudia Gerstner-Link

Claudia Gerstner-Link is a specialist in semantics and typology. Her dissertation thesis "Über Generizität" is a typological study on the syntax and semantics of generic sentences. Her subsequent research focused on Papuan languages. Between 1999 and 2007 she did extensive fieldwork on Kilmeri, a language of the Border family in northwest Papua New Guinea. This work culminated in her grammar of Kilmeri published in 2018. The book contains a systematic and comprehensive description of several semantic domains that bridge grammatical and narrative structures. The Kilmeri text collection highlights her interest in vernacular oral literature and anthropology.