Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages (review)

In his introduction (1–38), the editor sets out to give a summary of long-standing statements on the nature of deixis and linguistic modes of spatial reference and to challenge these by introducing data from outside the European cultural sphere. But for a lack of focus, the account would make an excellent introduction to the field.

The first three papers are comparative. Robert Blust (39–51) provides reconstructions for Proto- Malayo-Polynesian of a number of locational terms, evolved from words for monsoons and ‘seaward’/ ‘downriver’; ‘inland’/‘upriver’ (recurring themes in the volume), as well as bodypart terms. For a more purely locative term like *dalem with reflected meanings such as ‘inside’, ‘below’, and ‘deep’, it is shown that e.g. ‘inside’ here has to be understood with reference to two, rather than three, dimensions. K. Alexander Adelaar (53–81) gives a rather wild array of directional terms and systems, ranging from Madagascar to Borneo and Vietnam, discussing also borrowed terms and systems, cosmological links to particular directions, and the impact of cultural imports in these areas. Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre (83–100) finds fascinating differences as well as similarities in the languages of New Caledonia.

The remaining papers are concerned with individual languages. Deborah Hill (101–26) examines in detail the contexts of use of competing means of directional and spatial reference available to speakers of Longgu (Solomon Islands [SI]). Roger M. Keesing (127–41) describes the system used in Kwaio (SI), stressing the importance of including less elaborate or exotic systems too. Jürg Wassmann (143–74) analyzes verbal and graphic representations by the Yupno (Papua New Guinea) to gain an understanding of their route knowledge, while Volker Heeschen (175–96) provides an account of child acquisition of the grammatical and cultural aspects of spatial reference among the Yale (West New Guinea). René Van den Berg (197–220) describes the system of Muna (Sulawesi), and Robin McKenzie (221–49) that of Aralle-Tabulahan (Sulawesi).

John Bowden (251–68) shows how the scale of the sphere of reference determines use of directionals in Taba (Makian, Indon.). Hein Steinhauer (269–80) and C. L. Voorhoeve’s (281–85) contributions are structural accounts of the spatial conceptualization in Nimboran (West New Guinea) (both using nonoriginal data). Finally, Jürgen Broschart (287–315) describes the system of Tongan, focusing on locative classifiers.

The most salient points to emerge from the papers in this volume are that spatial and deictic terms can only be properly understood in context; they are rarely just spatial, but crucially encode particular geographic environments and knowledge of activities, and frequently cosmological and sociocultural concepts.

Further, although many languages may have expressions e.g. for the anthropocentric terms ‘left’ and ‘right’, this does not make them equivalents of their English counterparts, in that the conditions for their usage are often crucially different in those languages.

A general map showing the locations of all the languages in the volume would have been useful.