Comments on: Close but no guan: adventures in Matsigenka etymology

By: Lev Michael

Lev Michael — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:41:49 +0000

Hey Glenn,

Thanks for your great comments. I really like the folk etymology for ‘matsikanari’. Its true that folk etymologies are frequently inaccurate, but sometimes folk etymologies can actually drive changes in the form of a word. That’s actually what I suggest in my third post as a possible explanation for the ’seripegari’ variant one finds in certain parts of the Matsigenka world, despite the fact that the Proto-Kampa form appears to be ’seripigari’. I’m curious what you think of that.

Incidentally, the use of ‘matsi’ in Nanti seems very similar to what you have described for Matsigenka. Syntactically, it’s a form of ‘external negation’ contrasting with ‘tera’ and ‘hara’, which are both forms of ‘internal negation’. Correspondingly, I gloss it as ‘It is not the case that’, which is basically how one does external negation in English. And similarly to the Matsigenka case, Nanti speakers employ ‘matsi’ to express an rhetorical position opposed to the one that they are advancing.

By: Glenn Shepard

Glenn Shepard — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:51:00 +0000

P.S. on the subject of folk etymologies, a German-Peruvian linguist friend, Heinrich Helberg, once observed that (mostly Catholic) Spanish speakers recently arrived in Germany often interpret the ubiquitous German street name “Wilhemstrasse” as “Virgen-strasse”!!! (“Virgen” being of course the Virgin Mary).

Once again, what a cool blog. I stumbled onto it completely by accident.

By: Glenn Shepard

Glenn Shepard — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:46:57 +0000

I had no idea such a blog existed. But here’s my two cents worth. I have actually heard Matsigenka speakers generate their own folk etymology for “matsikanari” (witch). The term matsi is used as a rhetorical negative, much like “a caso” in Spanish; the closest English equivalent would be, “I mean, it’s not like…” So matsikanari would, according to this truly ethno-folk etymology, “It’s not like it’s a guan!” (in Spanish, “a caso es pava”?). This would be the law-abiding Matsigenka citizen’s reproach to the sorcerer: “It’s not like your sorcery victim is a guan, something that you can eat. You can’t eat people, they’re not good to eat.” The implication being that if the sorcerer’s victim were indeed a source of food, then this kind of predation might be forgiven. But because the sorcerer’s violence has no practical value (you can’t eat people, after all…) then it is gratuitous and hence morally unacceptable. Now I’m not saying I believe this is a legitimate etymology for the term. But coming from the mouths of the Matsigenka themselves, it is much more illuminating about Matsigenka cosmology (if not so about linguistics) than other more dubious folk etymology. On the subject of seripigari, I think there is not much room to argue against that etymology. Everything we know about Matsigenka shamanism and mythology suggests a stronger relationship between tobacco, intoxication and shamanism. Sometimes a cigar (or wad of intoxicating tobacco paste) is just a cigar.

By: Tobacco, intoxication, and many happy returns: The etymology of seripigari, Part I « Greater Blogazonia

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:42:02 +0000

[...] January 2, 2008 Little did I realize when I first started writing about Matsigenka etymology that there is quite a little etymological cottage industry among cultural anthropologists who study Matsigenka society — especially those focusing on matters related to Matsigenka spirituality/religion. Personally, I suspect that this etymological tradition all began with seripigari ’shaman’. That is, the word seripigari — the shamans themselves are, of course, blameless. The word seripigari exhibits a degree of semantic compositionality that I think appeals to many scholars’ imaginations. One can immediately spot two roots in the word — seri ‘tobacco’ and pig ‘intoxicate, poison’ (or so it seems) — and as it so happens, tobacco intoxication plays a major part in Matsigenka shamanism. How cool is that? The word therefore appears to have a simple etymology, and I have a hunch that this etymological coup has made Matsigenka specialists optimistic about etymology as tool for understanding Matsigenka spiritual and religious beliefs. (See for example, my discussion of proposed etymologies for matsikanari ‘dark shaman’, here, and sankarite ‘invisible being’, here.) [...]

By: David Marjanović

David Marjanović — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:35:01 +0000

A morpheme for “malefactive repetition”! :-o