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Yurok speech registers and ontology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Thomas Buckley
Thomas Buckley
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts at Boston
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Abstract

Aspects of the precontact ontology of the Yurok Indians of northwestern California may be explored through analysis of lexical and semantic shifts that occur between two speech registers in Yurok: “ordinary” speech and an auxiliary. “high,” or esoteric, speech style. In the “high” register, use of which was the prerogative of a social and spiritual elite, a variety of mechanisms are implemented in altering “ordinary” lexation and in attributing different meanings to parts of the “ordinary” lexicon. These include circumlocution, antonymy, attribution, and, most significantly, the shifting of referential focus. Semantic shifts are systematic within specifiable lexical sets and implicitly comprise subtle ontological exegeses. (Ritual languages, speech registers, translation, world view, Native North America)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 467 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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