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Article published In:
Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 9:2 (2023) ► pp.239–264

Variation in the bird-name lexicon in Qaqet (East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea)

 | University of Cologne
 | University of Cologne
Birds are of great cultural importance to the Qaqet-Baining people of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. In this paper, we investigate whether there are differences in people’s ability to name common birds in the local environment, and focus primarily on the variables gender and location. We showed pictures of local birds to small groups of Qaqet speakers in two villages—one located in an area of significant deforestation—and asked them to name them. Overall, men were able to name more birds, as were people from the village associated with greater forest cover. Our results show that gender, environmental degradation and shift to the local lingua franca Tok Pisin may all be responsible for the variation in Qaqet people’s ethno-ornithological lexicon.
Keywords: endangered language, language shift, ethnobiology, Papuan languages, bird names, empirical, ethno-ornithology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Fieldsites
    • 2.2Participants
    • 2.3Stimuli
    • 2.4Data analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1General observations
    • 3.2Quantitative results: Overview
    • 3.3Correct names
    • 3.4Unique names
    • 3.5Unique-and-correct names
    • 3.6Differences in bird salience
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1The effect of gender
    • 4.2The effect of location
    • 4.3Dialectal lexical variation
    • 4.4The effect of Tok Pisin
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 11 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.00018.fry
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