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Introduction Harland B Kerr of 30

Introduction

The three tables of files presented in this series represent the

penultimate stage in the development of a project that has been in

progress since 1960 when the author first became a resident, with his

family, of the Poloko District under the jurisdiction of Chief Yapeta

Tikepo.

The first published brief summary of this project was produced in 1984

as an article for the Festschrift of his close friend Professor Francis

Andersen, published in 1987, entitled “A Theory Of Language

Organisation Based On Hjelmslev’s Function Oriented Theory Of

Language.” As the work progressed, field notes were typed onto 3x5

cards. These field notes ultimately functioned as the basis of endnotes

incorporated in the chartered “theses” to validate the theory as it

developed.

It became progressively apparent that the organisation of both the

language and the culture in general is congruently governed by the

same four relationship-focused function primes, in what is now

described as a Grammar of Culture. As a result the internal

organisation of any one Pitman Quartered Square (PQS) subsystem has

the potential to throw light on the internal organisation of all other PQS

subsystems. There is therefore a lot of redundancy in the endnotes

which the author has not had the time and energy to edit out.

The author also sometimes elevated an endnote to the status of a

preliminary draft, sometimes long, of a section of the developing

theses, planning in due course to reduce or eliminate it later as the

endnote became part of a documentary thesis. But now that the

author has reached his ninetieth year he has had to choose between

possibly never being able to present the triad of files until the endnotes

are properly edited before he dies or presenting the triad in an

unfinished state with most of their baggage of endnotes unedited. He

chose the latter option under the promptings of his long time close

friend and colleague Dr Karl Franklin.

The following is a summary of the overall PQS system of organisation of

the Witu Grammar of Culture as a foundation for coming to terms with

the three tables of files with their mostly unedited end notes.

The Grammar of Culture is not the highest level Pitman Quartered

Square (PQS) system. It is overarched by the ultimate PQS system, the

triad of three High Beings who constitute the person-focused

monofocal Akolali Centric PQS system which leaves its stamp on all

levels of organisation of the Grammar of Culture.


The name of the supreme High Being, Akolali, the sum of

submorphemic constituents (SMCs) that encode him as symbolically

resident at the matai ‘zenith’, the highest point of the universe, defines

the ultimate nature of the first relationship-focused function prime,

autodependency. All relationships take their origin from this ultimate

autodependent being. The Witus’ autodependency, that gave them

the capacity to either obey or disobey his authority, was a derived

autonomy that underlies the development of their Grammar of Culture.

Figure 1 The supreme high being creator/planter Akolali <a ko l ali supreme High Being <up more ligative male being

Since the term for the ‘zenith’, matai, is the source of the pair of

allomorphs, mate and mata, of the verb root meaning ‘to plant’,

Akolali is identified as the planter, and so creator, of all living things,

beginning with plant life. And since the manner of their derivation from

the term for the zenith encodes life (mate) and death (mata), this

encodes the theme of the Grammar of Culture, the dualistic opposition

of life and death over which Akolali has control.

The power of the personal relationship between each Witu and their

planter/creator was conceived as so important that adults used to tell

their children never to move suddenly under an overhanging object.

This was lest they inadvertently snap the taut double helix po ‘twine’ of

spirit life bonding Akolali at the matai ‘zenith’ to their matai ‘crown of

the head’. They would then die prematurely before the time that

Akolali, the governor of the eternal present from the zenith, had

preordained that they die. It was attached at the moment of birth.

Akolali then protected and sustained them through every present

moment of their lives, from his place at the zenith where he governed

every present (right now) moment. This accounts for the metalinguistic

relationship of the following pair of Witu terms.

Figure 2 The present moment of creative begetting and birthing at the zenith opi now opi- to beget as a man to give birth as a woman

Consistent with this, the name given to the supreme High Being, Mamaitua, by the

Dawawa people of the Milne Bay Province of PNG is the product of the following

pair of SMCs (personal communication by Martyn Knauber, the SIL translator).

Figure 3 The God who gives birth among the Dawawa of Milne Bay

Mamaitua Mamai tua Supreme High Being’ Daddy gives birth>

The Akolali centric Witu Grammar of Culture consists of four primary

PQS systems.

The First Primary PQS system of the Witu Grammar of Culture, The

Personal Identification System and the Palindrome Iconic Schema

The first is the Personal Identification system. As the first of the four

primary PQS systems it is the equivalent of the seed that holds hidden


within itself the potential of the entire set of four PQ systems. It

metalinguistically encodes each Witu and every other person in the

world as a unique triadic being, the sum of the following three universal

distinctive features, their name, voice and face.

Figure 4 The three universal distinctive features of every person Ibi name tobotobo [tomo po → tombo] tomo vibrating po twine voice lene timini lene eyes timini nose face

The recognition of the voice and the face in the identification of a

person is not a cultural phenomenon, and therefore not a recent

development. It takes its origin from the natural world, the world of

penguins as an excellent example, long before mankind appeared. It is

therefore a universal phenomenon and susceptible to scientific

investigation.

The brilliant pre-scientific and pre-literate Witu drew on palindromes to

reveal their knowledge of the voice and face as the prime keys for the

identification of a person. They had as their guiding principle the

ultimate palindrome, the universal geo-palindrome, the sun standing at

the matai ‘zenith’ at noon during an equinox. It is then half way

through the day and night cycle that governs vegetative growth, and

half way between the two solstices that govern the flowering cycle of

plants and the mating cycle of animals. At this point in space-time, the

two mirror halves of the day are in juxtaposition with each other.

The sun at the zenith at noon during an equinox is the here and now

moment in space-time of the entry into the world of the special seed

child as the permanent solution to the problem of death. It is the key to

the function of the fourth primary PQS system, the Protective covering

PQS system, and the great Timbu Spirit Fertility Cycle of events. During

this four months of feasts and sing sings, at the time of the equinox the

sun stood directly above the 20’ poles taken to the ceremonial long

house from the timbu spirit house complex of each men’s hamlet of a

Witu District with a name. The inside of the timbu spirit houses had been

kept in total darkness, encoding the consequence of the separation of

the Witu from Akolali by their stubborn disobedience in not coming for

their gift of articulate speech until called four times. Hence the name

for the 20’ pole.

Figure 5 The significance of the timbu spirit house pole tugi yomo tugi yomo 20’ timbu spirit house pole stubborn tree pole

At noon, with the sun at the matai ‘zenith’ during the equinox, the 20’

stubborn poles cast virtually no shadow. Light had dominated darkness.

The significance of this moment in space-time was captured by what is

now known as the Witus’ Zenith iconic schema. It highlighted the

significance of Akolali’s symbolic presence at the zenith and

anticipated his final solution to the problem of death, by the coming

into the world of his son, encoded in the Zenith iconic schema as the


man of light doomed to die but regaining his life as representative of

his group, mankind.

The importance of this metalinguistic event is consistent with the

following observation by Eliade Mercea in his book The Sacred & The

Profane The Nature of Religion.

“The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.” “....The discovery or projection of a fixed point – the center – is equivalent to the creation of the world....” “Revelation of a sacred space makes it possible to obtain a fixed point and hence to acquire orientation in the chaos of homogeneity, to “found the world” and so live in a real sense.” (Eliade Mercea I957:21, 22, 23)

The Witu term for each of the above three universal distinctive features,

by which each individual person is identified as a triadic being, gives

clear formal expression to the nature of the relationship-focused

function prime it expounds. Each has the following in common. All

three terms are signified by palindromes, icons for balance, harmony

and perfection. But each is a specifically and systematically different

palindrome.

The first palindrome by which a person is identified, the term ibi ‘name’,

is a phonemic palindrome, the simplest and most fundamental

palindrome. It is governed by the first relationship focused function

prime, autodependency. This indivisible atom-like term ibi ‘name’

identifies each person as a single dimensional unit of society. It gives

cognitive oral/verbal expression to the identity of the person with the

distinctive voice and face. When another person hears the voice

and/or the face of that person it brings to mind the name of that

person by which they may be addressed or talked about with other

persons, in the correct social context. When Moses met God at the

burning bush and asked for some evidence that would confirm to the

Israelites that he had met with their God, his reply was simply “Give

them my name”, meaning “I am that I am”, a palindrome. The name is

so important to the Witu that Witus identify themselves, and themselves

alone, as the actual speaker of the moment, by the focal free personal

pronoun no ‘I/me’i of the first of the four Witu free personal pronoun

PQS systems. This most focal of free personal pronouns is culturally

synonymous with the personal name by which others identify them, in

the right social context. The term no ‘I/me’ is never used in a reported

speech situation such as ‘He said, “I will go”.

The second palindrome by which any person is identified, the tobotobo

‘voice’, is a systematically more complex palindrome than the

phonemic palindrome ibi ‘name’. It is a morphemic palindrome. Its

duplicated morphemic unit tobo in isolation is articulated phonetically

as [tombo] and is the product of elision of the following pair of

submorphemic constituents.


Figure 6 The po as vibrating twine tomo po tomo po vibrating twine vibration twine

The first SMC <tomo> is metalinguistically related to the Enga term for

‘vibrations’, tómó.ii The second SMC <po> is the Witu term for the

double helix ‘twine’ made by women rolling two thin strands into one

strong one between the palm of their hand and thigh.

The duplicated morphemic unit <tobo> encodes the up and down

binary nature of the vibrations of po ‘twine’. The vibrations emanate

from the ‘larynx’ signified by the Witu term tomo po which also signifies

the ‘oesophagus’ as the food track.iii In this way it metalinguistically

encodes the binary relationship between egressive speech and

ingressive food.

The shift from the up to the down phase of a vibration is a tight knit

clinal shift; the up phase being the inverse or mirror image of the down

phase. The bond between the two terminals of the vibrating twine must

be permanently taut. All this, and much more, is consistent with the

governance of the tobotobo ‘voice’ by the second relationship

focused function prime interdependency.

Consistent with this, the duplicated morphemic constituent written

phonemically as /tobo/, the product of elision of the pair of SMCs

<tomo> ‘vibration’ and <po> ‘twine’, metalinguistically encodes

vibrations as carrier waves produced in the tomo po ‘larynx’ on which

articulate messages can be superimposed. The Witu encode their

brilliant pre scientific knowledge of this by making a metalinguistically

significant pair of musical instruments that produce vibrations when

held by one hand in the mouth and struck at the other end by the

other hand. One of the vibrating instruments, the small ‘two stringed

mouth bow’, is known as the wapiyala, the product of the following

SMCs.

Figure 7 The vibrating po ‘twine’ as a both a message producer and carrier wave wapiyala wapi ya la two stringed mouth bow striking stick sky speech

The first SMC <wapi> is the Witu term for a ‘striking stick’. The second

SMC <ya> is related metalinguistically to the Kewa term for the ‘sky’.

The third SMC <la> is related metalinguistically to the Kewa term for

speech making and the Witu term la of the expression la agale

‘mythical language’ that deals with origin events. This highlights the

fact that the Witu genuinely qualify to be identified not just as members

of the species homo sapiens, but as homo sapiens sapiens ‘man that

knows that he knows’, and can explain such knowledge to each other

and even to non Witu speakers.

The third of the three terms signified by palindromes of the Palindrome

iconic schema by which every Witu is identified, the term for the ‘face’,

lene timini, is systematically more complex than the second


palindrome tobotobo ‘voice’. Consistent with its governance by the

third relationship focused function prime, independency, it is the

product of a pair of independent words which are also different lexical

terms, lene, that signifies the ‘eye’, and timini, that signifies the ‘nose’.

The eyes are paired but separated from each other. However, most

importantly they are evenly balanced on either side of the central

nose, and, with the nose, constitute a palindrome, a three dimensional

anatomic palindrome.

We now note that while the pair of up and down phases of vibrating

po ‘twine’ of the second palindrome tobotobo ‘voice’ merge clinally

into each other, governed by the second relationship focused function

interdependency, the two lene ‘eyes’ of the face gives further proof of

their governance by the third function prime independency in the

following way. The term for the central timini ‘nose’ is the product of

the following pair of SMCs.

Figure 8 The nose as a bridge between the eyes across a gap timini timi ni nose bridge inalienable body part possession

The first SMC <timi> is related metalinguistically to the Witu term for a

‘bridge’. It metalinguistically encodes the nose as the equivalent of a

bridge across a gap between the anatomically separated eyes.

Kewa has an even more unique anatomic palindrome for the face

than does Witu. We discover this when we align the Kewa term for

‘face’, ini agaa, and the Kewa term for a ‘single seed’ of the karuga

pandanus palm, agaa ini. The pandanus palm seed encodes the

words that proceed from the mouth (of the face) of an embodied

(anatomic) being. Consistent with this, according to Karl Franklin, the

irregular long vowel aaiv of the Kewa term agaa ‘mouth’ reflects the

loss of a constituent of a word present earlier in its history. That lost

constituent in this instance is the ‘general activity’ clitic –le still retained

by the Witu term for ‘word’ and ‘language’, written phonemically as

agale and pronounced phonetically as [aƞkaale].

Figure 9 The mouth and the seed word ini agaa <ini agaa> ‘ face <eye mouth> aga ini <aga ini> pandanus palm seed <pandanus palm seed>

The karuga pandanus palm produces a soccer ball like fruiting body

with a surface layer of honeycombed-like small cells. If the palm grows

in the wild, like the forests of Mt Yalibu, the individual cells dry out and

open up like a small mouth to release their single seed, an icon for a

word from the zenith to the world below. This accounts

metalinguistically for the message encoded by the pair of SMCs of the

Witu term for ‘word’ and ‘language’, agale. Its first SMC <aga> is

related metalinguistically to the proto term *aga for the ‘karuga


pandanus palm’ of the Enga family of languages embraced by the

Kewa people group in the Witu origin of language and death myth.

Figure 10 The seed as the word agale aga le word language karuga pandanus palm activity

The face, unlike the voice which changes very little after adolescence,

registers the passage of time as a person ages. Also, unlike the voice,

the face can be hidden from direct view by something as minor as a

piece of material. In this respect the face is like the yomini functioning

as the Witu term for a ‘shadow’ and expounding the third relationship

focused function prime independency in the Yomini iconic schema.

The yomini as a ‘shadow’ --- unlike the yomini as the ‘reflection’ which

is governed by the second function prime interdependency in the

Yomini iconic schema --- disappears when the person casting it is

hidden from the sun during the day. In this respect the face has

overtones of death which is not a feature of the voice of the

Palindrome iconic schema or of the reflection of the Yomini iconic

schema.

The face of an anatomical embodied being anticipates the

metalinguistic function of the bipolar number focused fourth

palindrome of the Palindrome iconic schema, governed by the fourth

relationship focused function prime, symbiotic dependency. This is the

point of entry into the Palindrome iconic schema of the woman, as

wife, signified by the syllabic palindrome atoa (a to a). She is the maker

of the double helix morphological palindrome po ‘twine’ and is the

pro-creator of children, both male and female, to offset the doom of

death pronounced on every Witu person. Every individual must die. But

the group, society, survives through the pro-creative power of the

woman.

The atoa woman/wife ---- somewhat like the pair of allomorphs mate

and mata of the verb root ‘to plant’ that encodes Akolali as creative

planter and governor of both life and death --- carries a ‘planting

stick’, signified by the palindrome iti, the metalinguistic nominal

equivalent of the Witu verb root iti- to make double helix po ‘twine’. But

while the woman as wife gives birth as pro-creator she has no control

over death, as does Akolali.

The relationship between what is the trinitarian-like person-focused set

of three palindromes of the Personal Identification PQS system --- the ibi

‘name’, the tobotobo ‘voice and the lene timini ‘face’ --- is a

monofocal relationship. Their triadic but unitary monofocal function is

complemented within their PQS system by the single bifocal number

focused fourth function prime symbiotic dependency. This prime

governs the symbiotic relationship between a spouse pair who pro-

create offspring. It is the polar opposite of the three monofocal

palindromes, the name, the voice and the face. But the following


evidence shows the brilliant way the bifocal spouse relationship is

recognised by the Witu as a palindrome, though systematically

different from the generic oneness of the three monofocal

palindromes. It is a social palindrome encoded by the double helix

structure of po ‘twine’ made by women.

To discover this we turn to the Witu myth of the origin of language and

death and the role of the Lai people group as recipients of the promise

of eternal life for their obedience in coming at once for the gift of their

articulate language. The Hagen people group is embraced by the Lai

people group in the Witu origin of language and death myth. The

relationship of both the Witu and the Medlpa speaking Hagen people

to their planter high being is encoded by the terms po and mbo of Witu

and Medlpa respectively. The Witu term po, like the Medlpa term mbo,

is fundamentally a generic term for life. For the Witu it encodes the

physical life of the two types of vines with complementary growth

patterns, one growing earthbound in open country, the other growing

heavenwards around trees in forests to the zenith. For the Witu it also

encodes the twine of spirit life linking them to Akolali. As the term for

the po ‘twine’ of spirit life, it inherits, then, the iconic significance of the

double helix structure of twine made by coiling two strands together as

one. It encodes the close link between good and evil, life and death.

This accounts for the following.

The Witu term for ‘vines’ and ‘twine’, the term po, is formally and

functionally related to a Witu verb root, the verb root po which means

‘to be bad’ and ‘to do something wrong’. Consistent with this, the

Kewa adjective ope which means ‘to not be good’ (Franklin and

Franklin 1978: 189) is formally and functionally related to the generic

term for ‘vines’ and ‘rope’ (= twine), the term ope.

We focus now on the metalinguistic function of the double helix po

‘twine’ as the device that encodes the social relationship of a pro-

creating spouse pair as a palindrome.

Creation of living things, people included, is fundamentally a planting

process signified by the metalinguistic relationship of the noun iti, the

term for a ‘digging planting stick’, and the Witu verb root iti that

signifies the making of po ‘twine’ by women rolling two thin strand into

one strong one between the palm of their hand and their thigh.

Figure 11 The creative digging/planting stick and twine Iti noun a digging planting stick iti- verb to roll two strands of twine into one strong one

The noun root iti becomes the verb root iti- by the systematic (non

random) metalinguistic expansion of its function, governed by the PQS

system of four relationship focused function primes.

Both the above two Witu terms with the palindrome form iti are related

metalinguistically to the Medlpa verb iti meaning ‘to make’ of the

following verb expression (Strauss 1989:11).


Figure 12 The binary (bifocal) spouse bond recognised at birth

wö amb iti <wö amb iti>

to make man woman <man woman make

This Medlpa verb expression means literally ‘to make man woman’. It

explains why a small infant smiles soon after birth in the Hagen belief

system. A small child, according to the Medlpa speaking Hagen group,

knows, even before it can eat or recognise its parents, that it must have

a complement in life. That complement is its future spouse. The child

knows instinctively, in other words, that nothing can exist in isolation. It

gazes up into space searching for a sign of its mate-to-be. When its

sees a symbolic representation of its future spouse, it smiles. The smile of

recognition on finding the future spouse is signified by the expression

wö amb iti ’to make man woman’. This is encoded in Witu in the

following way by the verb root iti that signifies the making of the double

helix po ‘twine’ made by women.

The begetting father and the gestating-birthing mother are encoded

by the fourth palindrome of the Personal Identification PQS system,

governed by the fourth relationship focused function prime symbiotic

dependency. The first term ali ‘man’, of the term for a spouse pair ali

atoa, is not a palindrome, but is merged into the single complex term

ailatoa. It encodes the open endedness of the paradigmatic

relationship between nominal lexical terms, nearly all not palindromes,

which signify cultural or culturally relevant things, the product of males

who remain in their district of birth. The syllabic palindrome atoa

‘woman/wife’ in this context encodes the syntactic grammar-like role

of women marrying out of their district of birth into the district of their

spouse, thus bonding otherwise independent Witu districts with each

other into a unified whole with a common shared language.

A marriage is confirmed by the sharing of food. Consistent with this,

there is a second Witu term signifying a woman as wife which is

restricted to her role as wife. This is the term natono. It is derived from

the following Witu verb expression.

Figure 13 The married woman eating and speaking Ne natono, no. ne n ato no, no Come, let us eat together. vegetable food eat let-us egocentric, come-imperative-singular

The final critical step in cementing a Witu marriage, after many long

and repeated hassles over the bride price, involved the double helix

po ‘twine’ as an icon for the cementing of the spouse relationship. The

point of no return occurred when the bride to be, present in the

groom’s village, took hold of the po ‘twine/rope’ that had tethered a

pig in the final moments of haggling.

We now identify the double helix po ‘twine’ that expounds the bifocal

number focused fourth relationship focused prime, symbiotic

dependency, as the Socio palindrome in the Palindrome iconic

schema.


As two independent strands wound interdependently around each

other, po ‘twine’ is the key to an important feature of the Pitman

Quartered Square (PQS) organisation of the Witu Grammar of Culture.

The four relationship focused function primes are not independent

primes. They are systematically related to each other.

Fr. Bill Fey, now Bishop Fey, drew Harland Kerr’s attention to the fact

that the fourth function prime, symbiotic dependency, was nascent in

the set of three function primes established by Hjelmslev. It was the

product of the merger of his second and third function primes now

identified as interdependency and independency respectively.

Hjelmslev himself was well aware of the interrelationship of his three

function primes. He was aware of the interrelationship of his first two

primes, now named interdependency and independency. This

relationship he termed cohesion. He also noted the interrelationship of

his second and third primes which he termed Reciprocation.

With the addition of the fourth relationship focused function prime,

symbiotic dependency, we now have two more complementary pairs

of relationship focused function primes, identified as the axis of

generation (multiplication) and the axis of coordination of the product

of multiplication.

Figure 14 The diagonal axes of generation and coordination Autodependency: axis of generation from the single monophyletic creative source

Interdependency: axis of coordination conjunction both and

Independency axis of coordination disjunction either or

Symbiotic dependency: axis of generation pro-creative multiplication

The cohesive relationship of the first two relationship focused function

primes, autodependency and interdependency, takes its origin, like

that of the axis of generation, from Akolali in the Akolali centric

relationship schema. In this schema, Akolali as the supreme high being,

governs the eternal present from his symbolic residence at the zenith,

from where he fixes the double helix po ‘twine’ of spirit life to every Witu

at birth.

Akolali, in an extended role, enters into a cohesive relationship with the

second high being, Pulu, the governor of the eternal oncoming future.

With Pulu, he is the joint source of pule ‘dreams’ foretelling the future. In

this extended role Akolali and Pulu are co-equal. Their co-equal role as

high beings was highlighted by the names given to two daughters,

Yalinuv and Pulumanu, by the senior chief of the Poloko district before

his death in inter clan warfare. He had named them after the pair of

dream givers Yali and Pulu. In naming the second daughter as

Pulumanu rather than just Pulunu, Epei had linked her with the name of

the messenger pigeon, puluma, that flew up and over an intervening

ridge, an icon for the matai ‘zenith, heralding, to an expectant

dreamer on the far side, the fulfilment of dreams by the whirr of its

wings. In this act the pigeon was an icon for the second dream giver

Pulu and for the dual function of the derived Witu verb stem ta-te-ka


that meant both ‘to skim into view over a rise’ and ‘to fulfil a dream’.

The root ta functions as the Witu verb root meaning ’to rise up’ and ‘to

raise up’. Since such dreams were the prerogative of males of a district,

the verb root ta is related metalinguistically to the root ta that functions

as the Witu terms of address and reference for ‘father’, Atai ‘Father!’

and agetai ‘my father’ respectively. It is also related to the first SMC

<ta> of the term tale for the ‘dreaming hut’, tale yapu, whose second

SMC <le> means ‘activity’, and, together with it, encodes the

information ‘district of citizenship activity’. In this function it is like the

expression Australian Aborigines may use for their homeland as ‘the

place of their dreaming’.

Very significantly, the Witu verb root ta of the derived verb stem ta-teka

is related metalinguistically to the ‘dual number’ clitic –ta that

coordinates two, and only two, persons in a relationship that is always

conjunctive. Its function as a dual number coordinating clitic is

complemented by the function of the Witu ‘dual number coordinating’

clitic –pala as in the following examples.

Figure 15 The dual number clitics –ta and -pala Ne-pala uku.. <ne -pala u k u> I am speaking with you (sg) <you sg with speak pres I> Ne-ta uku. <ne -ta u k u> I am speaking with you (sg) <you sg with speak pres I>

Figure 16 The Witu monofocal coordinating clitics

-na the other of a natural pair than the one just mentioned

-pala -ta dual number clitics both and

-ka either or

The Witu ‘conjunctive coordinating’ clitic –pala is interchangeable with

the ‘dual number conjunctive’ coordinating clitic –ta. Both expound

the second function prime interdependency in this context.vi Cognates

of both coordinating clitics are widely distributed through Trans New

Guinea phylum languages. The vowels of the clitic –pala are not

always the vowel a in other Trans New Guinea phylum languages. But

the consonants p and l are virtually invariant. They are the consonants

of the second dream giver of the Witu, Pulu.

Consistent with this, the dual number suffix –lip of the Wahgivii ‘1st

person dual’ free personal pronoun kilip, and also of the ‘2nd and 3rd

person dual’ free personal pronoun elip, is the product of inversion of a

very remote dual number bound form *pvlv whose consonants p and l

are stable, though reversible, and whose vowels are variable.

Very significantly, the ‘plural number‘ Wahgi free personal pronoun

suffix –nim is derived from the ‘dual number suffix -lip. This

metalinguistically encodes the role of ‘dual number’ as the point of

origin of both syntactic and paradigmatic relationship, consistent with

Hjelmslev’s observation that paradigmatic and syntagmatic

relationships are not independent of each other but different aspects

of the same fundamental type of relationship, just as space and time


are also recognised in Witu and other TNG languages as different

aspects of space-time.

We now note that the ‘1st person plural’ (‘we all’) subject suffix -mulu of

verbs of the Kaugel language group, is derived from the ‘1st person

dual’ (‘we two’) subject suffix –mbulu. Both verb suffixes are related

metalinguistically to the Kaugel term for a ‘mountain’, mulu. This small

set of metalinguistically significant Kaugel and Wahgi terms encodes

the dynamics of the unique binary relationship between the first and

second persons of the Witu triadic pantheon. It encodes the second

person of the Godhead rising up from the world below to return to the

seat he had vacated at the focal point of the universe, the zenith,

when he entered the world as a small thing, a seed child, to repair the

relationship between his father, the Creator, and death-doomed

mankind. In this act, he is the equivalent of the puluma pigeon flying up

to the top of a mountain and signalling his fulfilment of the most

significant of all dreams, the solution to the biggest of all problems,

death, the theme of the Witus great Timbu Spirit Fertility cycle of events.

The speakers of the Kaugel language refer to their God as Pulu-ye

‘Root man’. The speakers of the Medlpa languageviii refer to him as

puglwö ‘Root-stock man’. The function of puglwö is summarised by

Strauss in his book The Mi-Culture Of The Mount Hagen People Papua

New Guinea.

‘It is most important to note that Medlpa, like other Papuan languages, distinguishes mbo, or “seedling, cutting,” from pugl, or “root-stock.” …”seedling-people” includes the concept of being planted. In other words, mbo-wamb [seedling-people] is a religious term, and what it indicates is that wamb [people] do not see their pugl, “root-stock,” as derived from themselves, as part of themselves, but believe that at some stage they were “planted” by some hidden puglwö, or “root-stock-man,” in order to multiply as “person-seedlings,” just as taro and yam seedlings are planted in a field.” (the underlining has been added) (see The Mi-Culture Of The Mount Hagen People Papua New Guinea p. 2)

The metalinguist function of Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane in the Witu myth of

the origin of language and deat

We now have to account for what seems superficially to be two high

beings, additional to the first and second high beings, Akolali and Pulu.

Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane’ are cited as the givers of articulate language,

linked with death for the Witus in the Witu myth of the origin of

language and death.. But they are not two additional high beings.

They encode the embodiment of the second member of the Triad of

Witu High Beings, the second dream giver Pulu.

To understand their metalinguistic function we note that they expound

the third relationship focused function prime, independency, in the

Akolali Centric relationship schema. This prime is expounded by the

Anatomic three dimensional palindrome in the Palindrome iconic.

schema. This helps us to understand the nature of the third person of

the Trinity, known as the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, but identified as the

Embodier in the Witu metalanguage. His first function as Embodier was


to give three dimensional shape to the universe when he moved over

the face of the deep. His second function as Embodier was to give

three dimensional shape to the thoughts of Akolali. He inspired the

prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament.

The thoughts of God became alphabetised under his jurisdiction. An

alphabet has the equivalent of three dimensional shape, pre

determined by the universal three dimensional shape of the mouth

cavity. In his third role as Embodier, the third person of the trinity gave

three dimensional shape to the second person of the Trinity, at the

incarnation. His fourth and final role as Embodier is captured by a

restatement of the Acts of the Apostles, as the Acts of the Holy Spirit in

the building up of the Church which is the body of Christ.

We are now in a position to determine the true function of Tu Aneta ‘Tu

and Ane’ as the metalinguistic manifestation of the embodying

function of the third person of the Trinity, himself the product of the

cohesive relationship of the first two persons of the Trinity.

The first term Tu encodes a single seed of the karuga pandanus palm

falling from a dried out cell of its soccer ball like fruiting body, an icon

for a message from the zenith to the world below. It is related

metalinguistically to the second word of the Enga expression ánga túu

signifying a single túu ‘nut’ of the ánga ‘pandanus palm’ (Lang Enga

Dictionary: 9)

The second term Ane, articulated phonetically as [Aane] is related

metalinguistically to the Kewa term for ‘ear’, aane (Franklin and Franklin

Kewa Dictionary: 294). It encodes the message following a track from

the mouth of the messenger from heaven to the kale kene ‘ear hole’

of a person in the world below willing to receive the messenger and his

message encoded by the first term Tu of the word pair Tu Aneta ‘Tu and

Ane’.

It is important to note that the names of the pair of high being dream

givers, Yali and Pulu, require no coordinating term. Yali Pulu-ta ‘Yali

and Pulu’ never occurs. Each high being, the first and second persons

respectively of the trinitarian, Godhead, automatically presupposes the

other in an unbreakable cohesive relationship. By contrast Tu and Ane

are always linked by the ‘dual number coordinating’ clitic –ta. This

implies that each term Tu and Ane is metalinguistically independent of

the other.

The three yet one monofocal system of relationship is particularly well

illustrated also by the Witu Yomini Iconic Schema in which the term

yomini signifies the three universal God given natural features of every

living person: a living spirit, a reflection and a shadow, in

complementary relation with the yomini as a ‘man made arbitrary

representation’ of someone or something.


Figure 17 The Yomini Iconic Schema

1 Yomini as living spirit 2 Yomini as reflection

3 Yomini as shadow 4 Yomini as a man made representation

The yomini as a ‘living spirit’ encodes the supreme first high being,

Akolali, who fixes the double helix po ‘twine’ of spirit life to every Witu

at birth. The yomini as ‘reflection’ encodes the cohesive mirror image

relationship of the second person of the trinity with the first person. It is

an unbreakable bond. The reflection maintains its formal identity as a

true manifestation of its source, the living spirit, at all times and places.

This was captured by the Witu term devised to signify a mirror, yomini

poko ‘the living spirit goes (into the mirror)’. The yomini as ‘shadow’

reflects the role of the third person of the trinity. It changes during the

day and from day to day, but always in a systematic way that was

captured by Christ’s definition of the Holy Spirit to Nicodemus..

Like the third person of the trinity, the product of the cohesive

relationship between the first and second persons of the free personal

pronoun system, no ‘I/me’ and ne ‘thou/thee’, is the 3rd person. It has

the underlying form none, but has been reduced to the form one by a

not uncommon zeroing process in world languages, and common to

all the languages of the Goroka family of the Trans New Guinea

phylum.

The following figure shows how the third member of each monofocal

set of relationships, personal, spatial, and temporal, is the product of

the cohesive relationship between the first two members. The same is

true of the bifocal fourth set of type-number terms.

Figure 18 Monofocal 1+2 3 personal, spatial, temporal and numeric relationships

1] PERSON pro-nominal 2] SPACE verbal

1] no I/me 2] ne thou/thee

1] nvix come 2] pv go

3] onex he/him 4]] 3] pvnv pass by/over 4]] ya to travel about

3] TIME tensexi 4]] TYPE-NUMBERxii

1] -k present 2] -o future 1] named numberxiii 2] unnamed digits

3] -ko past 4]] 3] named digits/ body parts

4]] 5 generic numbers

The metalinguistic function of the great Timbu Spirit Fertility Cycle: the

covered roof of the long house and the covered ground ovens

This brings us to the metalinguistic significance of the Witus’ great Timbu

Spirit Fertility cycle of events over a four month period embracing the

equinox. It is the polar opposite of the monofocal Personal

Identification PQS system of the Witu Grammar of Culture and

expounds the bipolar number focused relationship prime symbiotic

dependency.


Consistent with this, every one of the very large membership of the

Poloko District lived under the one extended grass roof of the mi yapu

(taro house) ‘ceremonial long house’. The wives who had lived

independently of their husbands now lived with them in their own

family section. Members of potential enemy districts, but related by

wives who had been born in the Poloko District, were welcome and

joined in the sing sings and feasts, sleeping in the Yu yapu ‘Guest

house’ just off from the lower section of the long house.

In this context the ‘vegetable food display platform’, the yotoleyo, of

split black palm trunks, encoded the permanent solution to the

problem of death for the death doomed Witu who had failed to come

for their gift of articulate language until called four times. It has the

following pair of metalinguistic functions.

Figure 19 The final solution to the problem of death yotoleyo yoto leyo vegetable display platform corpse burial pole vegetable display platform yo tole yo special giver of a special gift make right give a special single gift

When decomposed into the pair of SMCS <yoto> ‘corpse’ of a dead

man and <leyo> the horizontal ‘pole’, to which the body was bound

between two forked poles, it encoded the metalinguistic information,

‘the corpse on the burial pole’.

It can also be decomposed into another pair of SMCS. One constituent

is the discontinuous homophonous pair of terms <yo...yo> encoding

‘the special giver of a special single gift’ and ‘the giving of a special

single gift’. The other is the medial constituent <tole> that is related

metalinguistically to the term tóle that means ‘to make right’ in the

Enga language embraced by the Kewa people group in the Witu

origin of death and language myth.

Figure 20 Witu special versus common functionxiv

-yo ‘special person agent’ clitic yo-to ‘special giving’ verb root -me ‘common agent or natural force ‘ clitic me-te ‘general/common giving’ verb root

The last primary PQS system, then, of the Witu Grammar of Culture is the

Protective covering system that metalinguistically encodes the way the

broken personal relationship between each disobedient Witu and

Akolali is re-paired.

Figure 21 The Witu Egocentric (focal) free personal pronoun PQS system singular dual plural

1st person no tota toto

2nd person ne kita kiwi

3rd person one

The Protective covering PQS system is nascent in the submorphemic

structure of the bifocal number focused free personal pronoun kiwi of

the first, and so focal, egocentric free personal pronoun PQS system.

The ultimate bifocal free personal pronoun of this focal pronoun

system, kiwi, means both ‘you all’ and ‘they and them all’.xv It encodes


the neutralisation of the 2nd person addressee and 3rd person referent

pronominal roles when there is more than one of them. It is the product

of the submorphemic constituents <ki> and <wi>.

The first submorphemic constituent <ki> of the free personal pronoun

kiwi is related to the Kewa term for a ‘hand’, ki, the sum of four fingers

with the thumb excluded. It is also related to the first SMC <ki> of the

fourth of the four Witu number clitics, -kiti, signifying a potentially open

ended number of persons. It also functions as the first SMC <ki> of the

‘general exemplary’ clitic –kiti.

Most significantly the first SMC <ki> of the bifocal number focused free

personal pronoun kiwi ‘you, they them all’ is related metalinguistically

to one of the two highly irregular verbs which are distinctive features of

the Protective covering iconic schema. They, and they alone, signify

benefaction by duplication of the ‘benefactive’ suffix –ka. The product

in this instance is benefactive verb stem ki-ka-ka- of the verb

expression toge kikaka- that means ‘to make a ground oven for

someone else’. Its function is complemented by the equally irregular

benefactive verb stem wi-ka-ka- of the verb expression yapu wikaka-

that means ‘to build a house for someone else’. In this instance its root

wi-, is related metalinguistically to the root wi of the Witu 2nd person

singular space-based term wini ‘there where you (singular) are’. This

pair of highly irregular benefactive verbs, yapu wikaka- ‘to build a

house for someone else’ and toge kikaka- ‘to make a ground oven for

someone else’, encodes the complementary metalinguistic function of

i) the common roof covering over all the members of the district

celebrating the activities over four months, and ii) the covered ground

ovens in which each family group will cook the vegetable food stuffs

displayed on the yotoleyo ‘display platform’ outside their section of the

long house.

This highly irregular pair of benefactive verb expressions, then, identify

themselves in this way as very important devices of the Witu

metalanguage whose theme is the irregularity of the entry of death

into the world, and whose solution is encoded by the Witu verb root lati

that means both ‘to create’ and ’to re-pair’, each event automatically

presupposing the other. The period between these two cohesively

related events is the story line of the metalanguage. The following are

two Enga metalinguistic cognates of the Witu verb root lati (Lang’s

Enga Dictionary :113, 110, 145).

wapu-ngí to create to fix (=to repair)

wái lyí-ngixvi to create to fix (=to re-pair)

The Witu have chosen the frail death doomed human body, a

palindrome in its own right, as the natural basis for the metalinguistic

thematic coding of the dualistic tension between life and death. The

men signify that they are telling the truth by holding the kadapi ‘index

finger’ of their right hand along the centre line of their body, the mukiti


‘ridge of the nose’, pointing upwards to the zenith. Consistent with this

they signify ‘truth’ lexically by a palindrome, a syllabic palindrome

nimini.

The mukiti ‘ridge of the nose’, however, has overtones of death. In the

third of the four systematically related Witu count systems, the upper

body part count system, the count goes up the left yono ‘hand and

arm’ to the shoulder and finally to body part 24, ‘the nostril of the

nose’. It then moves across the medial position, the mukiti ‘ridge of the

nose’, position 25, to the right hand side and regressively down to the

final number 49, the equivalent of the Jewish Jubilee year. In passing

over from one side to the other at the mukiti ‘ridge of the nose’, this

third count system, bypasses the matai ‘crown of the head’ and so

encodes the separation of the Witu from their supreme male head,

Akolali, resident at the matai ‘zenith’. Consistent with this, the first and

last body parts of this third count system are the ege ‘little finger’ of

each hand. It functions as the root of the derived verb stem ege-te-

that means to ‘feed and care for widows, orphans and pigs’. A widow

has lost her male head, her husband. An orphan suffers most from the

loss of his father who would have arranged for his bride price. A piglet

never knows its father and only follows its mother. They are all

vulnerable and They need to be cared for

The dualistic tension, then, of this third count system is actually

productive and has the potential to count off an indefinite number of

cycles of 49 upper body parts, particularly in counting off the months to

the beginning of an impending great Timbu Spirit Fertility cycle of

events with its four months of sing sings and feasts encoding the

solution to the problem of death when the sun would stand at the

zenith at noon during the equinox part way through the cycle of

events.. This is consistent with the following observation by Maybury

Lewis.

“The attractiveness of dualistic thinking lies, then, in the solution it offers to the problem of ensuring an ordered relationship between antitheses that cannot be allowed to become antipathies. It is not so much that it offers order, for all systems of thought do that, but that it offers equilibrium. Dualistic theories create order by postulating harmonious interaction between contradictory principles. The existence of fundamental antithesis is everywhere perceived as being part of human existence in this world. Dualistic theories insist that these antitheses do not tear the world apart, and humankind with it, because they are part of a cosmic scheme in which they are harmonized.” (Maybury-Lewis. D. 1989. Social Theory and Social Practice: Binary Systems in Central Brazil. In The Attraction of Opposites. Thought and Society In The Dualistic Mode. D. Maybury-Lewis and U. Almagor eds. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.) (p: 14-15) (the underlining has been added)

Another very significant key to the systematic nature of the Witu

metalinguistic dualistic theme of life and death is the PQS system of

four sets of metalinguistic iconic devices: 1] a fourfold PQS system of

lexico-icons,xvii 2] a fourfold PQS system of grammo-icons, 3] a fourfold

PQS system of phono-icons, and 4]] a bifocal system of socio-icons (see

section 2.0 of the festschrift article). Of the three monofocal proto


iconic PQS systems of this festschrift article, the first, the PQS system of

lexico-icons, is the seed-like germinal PQS system. It holds hidden within

itself the potential of the full set of four proto iconic devices, the lexico,

grammo, phono, and also socio iconic devices. This is typical of the

function of the first of the four relationship-focused function primes,

autodependency.

The Witu Grammar of Culture reflects the ultimate autodependent

governing role of Akolali as the giver, the sustainer, the taker, and,

finally, as encoded by the Zenith Iconic Schema, the renewer of life

through the person of his son.

Figure 22 The PQS system of four proto lexico-iconsxviii

1] **yoto trunk of a dead man’s body 2] **tuku elbows of a man’ arms

3] **patu crotch of a man’s thighs 4]] ** mu pair of scrota of a man

The above four nominal exponents of the PQS set of lexico-icons are

body parts which give clear formal expression to the nature of the

function of the four relationship-focused primes governing them 1)

autodependency, 2) interdependency, 3] independency and 4]]

symbiotic-dependency (see Kerr 1987 Figure 5 p: 113). Benson

Figure 23 Symbolic representation of the relationship primesxix

1] yoto ---- trunkxx unitary 2] tuku < elbow binary

3] patu ---< crotch trinary 4]] mu Ɵ scrota pair

The monofocal set of lexico-icons are disyllabic, reflecting the binary

organising principles governing of the Witu Grammar of Culture. The

bifocal fourth lexico-icon **mu ‘scrota’ is monosyllabic. It gives

expression to the clinal shift from the disyllabic lexico-iconic PQS system

to the four monosyllabic terms that constitute the grammo-iconic PQS

system.

The Witu were doomed to die because of an act of disobedience

involving the gift of language. They gave expression to their own

autodependency, derived from the primary autodependency of

Akolali, and did not come for this gift until called four times.

The final solution to the universal problem of death was another yoto

‘corpse’ implicit in the Zenith Iconic Schema. It is implied by the

function of the first submorphemic constituent <yoto> of the Witu term

yotoleyo cited above in Figure 19. It is the kind of term which

McElhanon and Voorhoeve identified as synchronically

monomorphemic but historically bimorphemic. It is one of the three

distinctive features of the Trans (Papua) New Guinea Phylum of

languages and is consistent with the overall binary/dualistic

organisation of the phylum. It is now referred to as the Track iconic

schema and embraces two types of tracks.

The son of the creator-planter Akolali entered the world of the death

doomed disobedient Witu down a vertical track from the zenith, thus

uniting heaven and earth. This is the metalinguistic heavenly equivalent


of an earthly track whose terminals are one and the same as the track

that unites them and are signified by the same term in TNG languages

such as Witu, Kewa and Enga. The Kewa term pora for example means

both a ‘door’ and ‘a path’ or ‘track’.

Enga has a large number of terms, different from the Kewa term pora,

and from each other, all signifying both the terminal doorways and the

track that unites them (Lang Enga Dictionary 1973: 29). The first SMC

<ka> of most of these terms is related metalinguistically to the Witu term

ka that signifies a ‘track’ and also functions as the first SMC <ka> of the

Witu term for a ‘door’, the term kago <ka> <ago> <door/track> <male

person> who walks along the track and through the door.

káita, kainámbu, kaitíní, kakuíta, kátí, yané, and yanéi xxi

All these terms signifying both the terminals and the track are the

space based equivalent of the Witu time-based verb root lati- that

conflates two events, creation and a re-creation when a broken

relationship was re-paired.

The term yagu of the two term utterance pipitexxii yagute --- that

encoded the promise of eternal life uttered by Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane’

to the pair of people groups who came at once for their gift of

articulate language --- encodes the seed from the sky which must be

received (ingested) to activate this promise. It is an example of a

metalinguistic term which is synchronically monomorphemic but

historically bimorphemic. It is the seed that followed a track from

heaven to earth to solve he problem of death.

Figure 24 The seed from the sky to solve the problem of death

yagu [ya

ku] → <ya ku>

seed from the sky sky seed

The root yagu, articulated phonetically as [yaku], is the product of a

pair of SMCs. The first is the SMCs <ya> related metalinguistically to the

Kewa term yaa signifying the ‘sky’ (Franklin and Franklin Kewa

dictionary 245, 317), The second is the Witu term for ‘seed’ ku. The

prenasalised constituent [] of the consonant of the second syllable --

written phonemically as /g/ but pronounced phonetically as [k] --

shifts from its pre-nasalised velar stop consonant to the vowel of its

syllable. This trasforms the second syllabic constituent into the SMC

<ku> whose vowel has become nasalised (signified by underlining). It

has become the metalinguistic equivalent of the Witu term for a ‘seed’,

the term ku.

The promise, then, of eternal life symbolised by the pipi tree species

was to be realised by the eating of the seed from the sky.

Consistent with the binary relationship-focused organisation of the TNG

Witu language and culture in general, the metalinguistic function of

the yagu [yaku] ‘seed from the sky’ is also similarly encoded by one of


the most important iconic schemas in the Witu language. It is the Zenith

Iconic Schema that identifies the highest point of the universe, the

zenith, as the creative-planting centre of the universe, and the

symbolic residence of Akolali, whose name is the product of SMCs that

encode him as ‘the male being higher than/above all’. This schema is

expounded by a closed set of five terms that share the same uniquely

irregular distinctive feature. Each is expounded by a pair of freely

fluctuating forms whose form and function determine the order in

which they must be decoded to reveal their subliminal message. The

first pair of allomorphs are the allomorphs mate and mata of the Witu

verb ‘to plant’, both derived from the Witu term for the highest point in

the ‘zenith’, the term matai. They give their name to the Schema.

The identification and ingestion of the seed from the sky as the means

of attaining eternal life is encoded by the second of the five terms of

the Zenith Iconic Schema. It is encoded by the pair of freely fluctuating

allomorphs of the Witu term for ‘cardinal 2’. One of them, written

phonemically as takuta, is the primary allomorph, articulated

phonetically as [takura]. The other allomorph, written phonemically as

taguta and articulated phonetically as [takura], is derived from the

primary allomorph takuta by nasalising the vowel of its medial syllabic

constituent <ku>. The product of this transformation is the secondary

derived allomorph written phonemically as taguta but pronounced

phonetically as [takura]. In this instance, the nasalisation of the vowel

u of the medial SMC <ku> has shifted regressively (backwards)to the

velar consonant k of its syllable, transforming it into the prenasalised

velar stop written phonemically as /g/ in the secondary derived

allomorph taguta. This phonological process is summarised below.

Figure 25 Cardinal 2 encoding a second single sky seed to solve the problem of death

takuta <ta ku ta> [ta

kuta] /taguta/

cardinal 2 <father seed homeland>

The product of this transformation is a word that is synchronically

monomorphemic but historically bimorphemic word. One of its two

SMCs, the SMC <ku>, encodes a ‘seed’ at the centre of the word

surrounded by the duplicated units of the discontinuous SMC

<ta……ta> that encode the paternity and the homeland of the seed,

Akolali resident at the zenith. The Witu root ta means ‘homeland’ or

‘district of citizenship’. It is related metalinguistically to the root ta of the

term of address for one’s biological father, Atai ‘Father!’, who

prototypically determines his son’s place of residence and citizenship.

The single sky seed, then, --- encoded by both the second syllabic

SMC of the root yagu of the utterance yagute uttered by Tu Aneta ‘Tu

and Ane’, and the medial syllabic constituent of the allomorph taguta

of ‘cardinal 2’ --- entered the world from the zenith to re-pair the

broken relationship between the Witu and their Creator-Planter,


Akolali. It had to be received (eaten) if the Witu were to obtain the

promise of eternal life encoded by the pipi tree species.

Since it is the gift of language that brought with it the doom of death

for the disobedient Witu, who did not come at once for their language

when called, the common language has become the repository for

the metalinguistic information that encodes the origin of death, and its

solution. This metalinguistic information is subliminal, and prototypically

binary.

The yagu ‘seed from the sky’ forms inside a protective covering

represented by the following Witu term.

yaku husk shell of egg etc.

Very significantly the Witu terms yagu ‘seed from the sky’ and yaku

‘husk’ are related metalinguistically to the following Fasu term

(Loeweke and May Fasu Dictionary: 1981 268).

yakú free, freely (as a gift with no thought of repayment

Since the seed from the sky encodes a person, the yaku ‘husk’

identifies the empty seat that that person left behind in coming into the

world. This was the person who ensured eternal life to those who

received him. This accounts for the presence of an ‘empty seat’ and

the ‘ear’ in another of the three distinctive features of TNG languages

now identified as the Track iconic schema. It was implicit in the

following evidence cited by McElhanon and Voorhoeve in their

publication Explorations In Deep-Level Genetic Relationships (1970 pp.

76-77) under the list of terms for Road (item 32)

“The items road, passage, opening, hole are semantically closely related. ... They also occur as the second constituent in many compounds which denote an opening or passage of some sort, such as door, bridge, unoccupied seat, ear.” (pp. 76-77 Item 32 Road) (the underlining has been added)

This observation by McElhanon and Voorhoeve is further substantial

proof that TNG languages, and their cultures in general, are

relationship-focused, and, therefore, governed by binary principles. For

the speaker of a TNG language, a track, path or road is not an entity in

its own right. It is something that relates terminals at either end. They are

either the doors of human habitations or the residential holes of

animals. The relationship between the binary terminals and the

track/path relating them is so intimate and inseparable that the same

term commonly signifies both, like the following Kewa term (Franklin

and Franklin Kewa Dictionary 1978: 204).

pora 1. a door

2. a road, path

The track iconic schema must have taken its origin from the mother

language group from which the TNG phylum of languages took its

origin at least 6,000 and possibly 10,000 years ago. It is impossible,

however, to reconstruct the original form of the word that signified both


a track and its terminals. This is because in TNG languages the focus of

attention is on the relationship between things rather than the things

themselves. However the Witu term for a ‘track’, ka, is the initial SMC of

several of the many Enga terms, cited below, that signify both a ‘track’

and a ‘door’ (Lang Enga Dictionary 1973: 29).

káita, kainámbu, kaitíní, kakuíta, kátí, yané, and yanéi

The entry down the heavenly track of the yagu ‘seed from the sky’ into

the world to solve the problem of death is the event that constitutes

the answer to the first of several metalinguistic sets of Enga questions,

the question aípá ‘What kind of event?’

The prime cause of this event is encoded by the nuclear SMC <aipa>

of essentially the same question, aipále ‘What kind of?’. This nuclear

SMC is the metalinguistic equivalent of the Kewa term aipa that

signifies ‘native salt’. It is coupled in this question aipále ‘What kind of?’

with the terminal SMC <le> that is the metalinguistic equivalent of the

Witu ‘general activity/event’ clitic -le. The kind of event, then, that is

the answer to this question is is encoded subliminally as ‘salt activity’.

We now note again that the Enga word aípá that asks the first Enga

question ‘What kind of event?’ is formally and functionally related to

the Kewa term for ‘native salt’ aipa also signifies the type of mushroom

that has a sweet salty taste, and grows at the pulu ‘base’ of the

particular type of tree known either as the pai or the yawe tree, whose

seasonal fruiting attracts a multitude of birds to the feast.

We can now deduce more precisely that ‘the activity of the native

salt’ encoded by the Enga question aipále ‘what kind of?’ is the

following kind of activity. It is the kind of activity represented by this

special kind of aipa mushroom that grows at the pulu ‘base’ of a very

special kind of tree. It is an icon, then, for Pulu ‘the second dream

giver’ of the Witu. He is the High Being associated with the world below.

He was himself the fulfilment of the dream forecasting the solution to

the problem of death. He was the special seed child who entered the

world at noon during an equinox to fix up what had gone wrong with

the first general planting by his father.

Consistent with this, the special seed child is encoded by the second

SMC <WAY> of the special hidden name for the ‘Godhead’, YAWAY.

This hidden term is derived from the ‘ground ovens’ whose sweet

savoury columns of smoke go up to the zenith where the supreme High

Father Being, Akolali, resides, the father being, encoded by the first

SMC <YAW> of the Godhead term YAWAY.xxiii

The building of the long house complex and the making of the ground

ovens during the climactic final four months of the great Timbu Spirit

Fertility Cycle of activities constituted a unique metalinguistic pair of

activities done for the benefit of the supreme High Being in expectation

of a beneficent response. These two activities are encoded, as noted


above, by the unique pair of highly irregular Witu verb expression toge

kikaka- ‘to make a ground oven for someone else’ and yapu wikaka-

‘to build a house for someone else’. These are the only Witu verbs

which duplicate the ‘benefactive’ suffix ka, and so identify these

activities as distinctive features of the Protective-Recovering Iconic

schema associated with the great Timbu Spirit Fertility cycle of events.

The vegetative food stuffs displayed on the yotoleyo ‘platform’ outside

each family section of the mi yapu (taro house) ‘the ceremonial long

house’ was taken from the yotoleyo of the long house to the ground

ovens as an offering in savoury smoke to Akolali.

The Kewa and Enga terms for the ground ovens themselves and the

making of the ground ovens are yawe and yawa. They derive from a

common mother term *yawai. It is to these ground ovens that the Witu

of the celebrating district, and relatives and friends from other allied

districts, flocked in great numbers like the birds that flock to feast on the

fruit of the tree referred to both as the pai tree and the yawe tree.

However, for the Witu, the mother term *yawai is the source of a term

yawale that encodes grief. Its derivative yawe in Witu signifies ‘no

man’s land’ where rubbish is thrown. This term also functions as the root

of the following Witu verb expression.

Figure 26 The destitute Witu widow Yawale yapu meko. <yawa le yapu me k o> She (the widow) is totally destitute <ground oven activity house sit present 3rd singlr>.

This Witu expression signifies a widow without possessions and without

even kinsfolk to help her. She encodes the state of the Witu who

disobeyed the call to come for the gift of their articulate language.

When they finally came for their language it was linked with the doom

of death.

The Kewa term yawale, however, whose pair of SMCs <yawa> and

<le> encodes the information ‘ground oven activity’, means

‘Celebration’ (Franklin and Franklin 1978: 254). This was because they

had been obedient when called to come for their language and had

been promised eternal life in the Witu myth of the origin of language

and death.

While, then, the two obedient people groups of the Witu origin myth

celebrate the great Fertility Cycle with rejoicing, the Witu Fertility Cycle

encodes their separation from their source of spirit life, the supreme

High Being, Akolali, the father being of the Godhead YAWAY.

We now note again that the ultimate attraction of the fruit bearing

yawe tree, also known as the pai tree is encoded subliminally by the

aipa mushroom variety with the sweet salty taste that grows at the pulu

‘base/roots’ of this special yawe/pai tree. As already noted, it identifies

Pulu, the second dream giver as the special seed child, who would

himself be the forecast solution to the problem of death. He is the


answer to the above expressions asking the questions, ‘What kind of

event?’ ‘How?’ and ‘To what advantage?’

The following pair of Enga terms encodes the Engas anticipation of the

coming of the seed child and identify him as ‘the first born male’ (Lang

Enga Dictionary 1973: 8).

Question Answer andóko ‘which one?’ ‘what kind of?’ andókó ‘first born male’ andúku ‘which one?’ ‘what kind of?’ andúkú ‘first born male’.

The nuclear SMCs andó and andú of these pairs of utterances, the

question and the reply, points to a common mother SMC <andau>, This

is related to the second of the four proto iconic terms for the sun

**andau that encodes the sun rising to make productive conjunction

with the zenith at noon during an equinox, the moment in space-time

of the entry of the special seed child into the world to solve the

problem of death.

Figure 27 The four proto iconic terms for the sun **pa’i standing momentarily at the zenith at the creative planting, centre of the universe at noon

**andau rising to make productive

conjunction with the zenith at noon

**angau disjuncting from the zenith at noon and

declining towards its death in the world below

***lau lying as if dead in a hole in the

ground ready to return to life

None of these proto iconic terms for the sun still signify the sun in

today’s daughter languages.. But the first term reconstructed as **pa’i

is retained in terms such as the term for ‘sunlight’ in the following

languages:

pa’i Witu paa Kewa wáhe Huli and fae Fasu.

It is also the source of the following pair of Enga terms.

wái seed

waí message

This special child is encoded as a seed by the pair of subliminal SMCs of

another Enga term that asks a special question ‘Which one?’ and

receives an identical echoed response ‘first born male’ (Lang: 11).

anúngu [anúgu] → <anú gu> → <anú ku> Which one? First born male. <my seed>

The identical echoed response anúngu ‘first born male’ to the Enga

question anúngu ‘Which one?’ can be decomposed into a subliminal

pair of SMCs <anú> and <gu>. The consonant g of the second SMC

<gu> of the Enga word anúngu is what linguists call a prenasalised

consonant. Though it has two phonological components, the nasal

part and the stop consonant part g, it is actually just a single

phoneme. It is identified by linguists as a prenasalised stop, a single

complex velar stop consonant. The nasal part of this complex stop

consonant now behaves phonologically as a device of the

metalanguage rather than the common language: it shifts from the


consonant g of the syllable gu to the vowel of the syllable and

changes it into a nasalised vowel. The end product gu is related

metalinguistically to the Witu term for ‘seed’, the term ku.

This accounts for the metalinguistic function of the first SMC <anú> of

the Enga question and answer term anúngu ‘which one?’ ‘first born

male’. The first SMC <anú> is related metalinguistically to the Witu free

personal possessive pronoun, anu ‘my’. The subliminal pair of SMCs,

then, of the Enga question answer term anúngu encodes the

metalinguistic information ‘my seed’.

The two pairs of Enga terms also highlight the role of palindromes as

very important devices of the metalanguage. One member of each of

the above two pairs is the tonal mirror image version of the other

member of the pair it belongs to. The same is true of the following two

pairs of Enga terms that encode the Enga people’s anticipation of the

coming of a special child, the metalinguistic equivalent of a message

bearikng seed. (see Lang: 8).

Question Answer andóko ‘which one?’ ‘what kind of?’ andókó ‘first born male’ andúku ‘which one?’ ‘what kind of?’ andúkú ‘first born male’.

This special child is encoded as a seed by the pair of subliminal SMCs of

another Enga term that asks a special question ‘Which one?’ and

receives an identical echoed response ‘first born male’ (Lang: 11).

anúngu [anúgu] → <anú gu> → <anú ku> Which one? First born male. <my seed>

The identical echoed response anúngu ‘first born male’ to the Enga

question anúngu ‘Which one?’ can be decomposed into a subliminal

pair of SMCs <anú> and <gu>. The consonant g of the second SMC

<gu> of the Enga word anúngu is what linguists call a prenasalised

consonant. Though it has two phonological components, the nasal

part and the stop consonant part g, it is actually just a single

phoneme. It is identified by linguists as a prenasalised stop, a single

complex velar stop consonant. The nasal part of this complex stop

consonant now behaves phonologically as a device of the

metalanguage rather than the common language: it shifts from the

consonant g of the syllable gu to the vowel of the syllable and

changes it into a nasalised vowel. The end product gu is related

metalinguistically to the Witu term for ‘seed’, the term ku.

This accounts for the metalinguistic function of the first SMC <anú> of

the Enga question and answer term anúngu ‘which one?’ ‘first born

male’. The first SMC <anú> is related metalinguistically to the Witu free

personal possessive pronoun, anu ‘my’. The subliminal pair of SMCs,

then, of the Enga question answer term anúngu encodes the

metalinguistic information ‘my seed’.

At the time of writing the festschrift article published in 1987, the theme

of the metalanguage had just begun to emerge in the pair of cognate


Witu and Kewa myths of the origin of death. In the more powerfully

articulated brief Witu myth a pair of large people groups was promised

eternal life for coming at once for their gift of articulate people groups.

When coupled with the Witu Zenith Iconic Schema, this promise was

found to be encoded by the root term yagu [yaku whose underlying

pair of submorphemic constituents (SMCs) <ya> ‘sky’ and <ku> ‘seed’,

encoded the ‘seed from the sky’. Like a seed he would die and return

to life again, as representative of his group, mankind.

The Zenith Iconic Schema, then, sets the initial and terminal parameters

of the meta-language, the creation and the re-pairing of the broken

relationship between the Witu and their Creator.

The Track Iconic Schema encodes the period between the two primary

events when things had gone wrong with the original creative planting.

It begins with the gift of articulate language by Tu Aneta ‘Tu and Ane’

recorded in the Witu myth of the origin of language and death. But this

gifting which went wrong had been preceded by a communicative

period represented by the katiyapale ‘lightning’ which 1adumbrated

the future break down in relationships and the final re-pair of the

relationship that had been broken at the time the Witu received the

gift of their articulate language linked with death.

The two different referents of the Kewa term pora illustrate the

following. Witu, Kewa and other TNG languages are relationship-

focused languages, with relationship-focused cultures. In a relationship-

governed language, a track is not conceived of as an entity in its own

right as it is in English, typical of Indo-European languages in general. It

is defined in the following way by Collins 1995 English Dictionary

the mark or trail left by something that has passed by.. 2. any road or

path affording passage … 3. a rail or pair of parallel rails on which a

vehicle …. runs.

No mention will be made of a door when defining the nature of a track

in an English dictionary. Nor will any mention be made of a track or

road when defining the nature of a door. Tracks and doors are quite

different kinds of things for naïve English speakers, whose focus of

attention is primarily on things in isolation rather than on the nature of

the relationship between them.


For the Witu, the Kewa and the Enga, however, a track is not an entity

in its own right. Nor is a door conceived as an entity in its own right. A

track is conceived of as something which relates two terminals. The

terminals are the doorways of human habitations, or the residential

holes of animals in trees or in the ground. The terminals and the track

which bond them are part of a unified schema. This is why the Kewa

term pora means not only ‘path’ or ‘track’ but also a ‘door’, the

terminal at the end of the track.

In Enga several different terms have the same function, signifying both

the terminal door or hole and the track linking the terminals at either

end (Lang 1973:29)

káita, kainámbu, kaitíní, kakuíta, kátí, yané, and yanéi

This also explains the subliminal meta-linguistic information encoded by

the pair of submorphemic constituents (SMCs) of the Kewa term for a

‘door’ and a ‘path’.

pora <po ra>

track, door <rope dual>

The first submorphemic constituent <po> of Kewa pora ‘track/path’

‘door’, is formally and functionally related to the Witu term po which

functions as the generic term for ‘vines’ and the term for ‘twine’ or

‘rope’. In the meta-language of the region embraced by the Witu

myth of the common origin of language and death, a long length of

twine or rope is iconically the same as a long track through space. This

is why the Witu term for ‘track’, ka, is formally and functionally related

to the term for both ‘road’ and ‘rope’, the term ka, in the neighbouring

Ku Waru subgroup of the Hagen Sub Family of languages, and why this

Ku Waru term also means ‘connection’ (Merlan and Rumsey 1991:368).

The second submorphemic constituent <ra> of Kewa pora ‘track/path’

‘door’ is formally and functionally related to the Wiru clitic -ta,

pronounced as [-ra] which functions both as a ‘dual-number’ clitic,

and as a ‘limited coordinating’ clitic coordinating the referents of two,

and only two, nominal terms with each other.

The terms for a track, then, in Witu, Kewa and Enga are important terms

of their meta-languages which encode the relationship-focused

governance of their universe, and of their language and culture within

it. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand how the people of

this region understand their universe. And to fail to understand this is to

fail to discover the laws which govern their language and their culture

in general. They are relationship-governed cultures, not category-

governed cultures. They are organised on Heraclitian principles, not

Aristotelian principles.


i This free personal pronoun no ‘I/me’ is never used in reported speech, e.g. He

said ‘I will go”. ii Very significantly the Enga term meaning vibration is a tonal palindrome. Each of

the two syllables has a high tonal peak. Enga lexical terms generally do not have

more than one high tonal feature. Note also the Enga term ángí that means

‘genuine’ ‘true’ etc and makes a minimal pair with the Enga term ángi meaning a

‘seed of the karuga pandanus palm’, both icons for the entry into the world, from

the zenith at noon during an equinox, of the perfect son of the creator/planter as

the final solution to the problem of death. iii Consistent with this the Huli term for food is tomo, and the Witu term tomoniya

means ‘the food of the High Beings. iv No other Kewa vowel than the vowel a has a phonemically significant long

vowel equivalent. v The suffix –nu is a ‘feminising’ suffix, commonly postposed to a male name. vi Two terms with the same function or the product of duplication commonly (and

characteristically) expound the second relationship focused function prime,

interdependency. In the third PQS set of Witu adjectival terms --- 1 nate ‘small, 2

dede ‘little’ ‘narrow’, 3 tube ‘big’ and 4 ludu ‘long’ ---- the second term dede is the

product of duplication. The Zenith iconic schema expounds the second function

prime interdependency in the second PQS subsystem of the third primary PQS

system, the Embodiment (Realisation) PQS system, of the Witu Grammar of culture:

all the terms of the Zenith iconic schema are pairs of terms with different forms but

the same meaning. vii The Wahgi language group is embraced by the Lai people group in the Witu

myth of the origin of language and death. viii The speakers of the Kaugel, Medlpa and Wahgi languages constituted what

Wurm had identified, with some justification, as a united subgroup the East New

Guinea Highland Stock. They are embraced by the Lai people group of the Witu

origin myth of language and death. ix The verb nv ‘to come’ (with a variable vowel) is related metalinguistically to the

egocentric free personal pronoun no ‘I/me’. It encodes the sun coming up to the

zenith, the symbolic residence of Akolali, from where he governs the eternal

‘present’ signified by the ‘present tense’ suffix –k. The ‘present tense’ suffix –k is the

only morpheme in the language, root, affix or clitic, that consists of nothing but a

consonant. As the voiceless stop phoneme k It functions as an icon for the

momentary break in the passage of time at the zenith to permit the release of the

special seed child into the world below. The passage of the sun over the zenith at

this moment in space-time is signified by the verb expression lou matai teteponoko

‘the sun is crossing over and passing the zenith’. x The product of the first and second persons, no and ne, is the virtual term none

that loses its initial phoneme, typical of the Goroka family of Trans New Guinea

phylum languages.


xi The oncoming future comes into productive cohesive conjunction with the

present, governed by the supreme high being, Akolali, at the matai ‘zenith’, to

generate the ongoing past. xii There are four sets of type-number terms 1) the set of four cardinal numbers, 2)

the two hands and two feet count system, 3) the upper body part count system of

24 body parts on each side of the body with the mukiti ‘ridge of the nose’ as the

medial cross over position, position 25, and 4) the five generic number terms, the

last two having the same function, peya mati and kaina mati ‘very many’. xiii odene ‘one’ takuta ‘two’ tebolo ‘three’ and tuyono ‘four’, then 4+1 4+2 4+3 2x4

etc. xiv The distinction between special and common function is an important feature

of the Witu metalanguage. Other examples are i) –pa’i ‘special topic’ clitic and –

pa ‘common topic’ clitic, ii) –lawe ‘special personal group’ clitic (such as the

disciples of Jesus) and –kiti ‘general/common group’ clitic (such as a group of

children), iii) -lawe ‘special person’ exemplary’ clitic and –kiti ‘common

exemplary’ clitic. xv This neutralisation is paralleled by the neutralisation of the difference between

consanguine kin and affinal kin in the bifocal sector of the Classificatory Kinship

PQS system within the second of the primary PQS systems of the Witu Grammar of

Culture, the Interpersonal Relationship PQS system’ The same term kaua signifies

both ‘father-in-law’ and ‘grandfather’ and the same term kaue signifies both

‘mother-in-law’ and ‘grandmother’. There is, then, also a neutralisation of the

difference between generations, the parental and the grandparental. xvi The second word lyíngi as an independent verb has the following two lexical

functions (Lang: 61) lyíngi ‘to dance’ and ‘to injure oneself’. The periphrastic Enga

verb expression wái lyíngi, then, subliminally encodes the following two apparently

antonymic metalinguistic messages, ’the seed dances’ and ‘the seed injures itself’. xvii In the article in the festschrift written for Harland Kerr’s friend Francis Andersen in

1984, and published in 1987, the lexico-icons were referred to as lexico-logues. The

term icon is now substituted for the term logue. The article can be accessed in the

Witu website. xviii See section 2.0 of the article written by Harland Kerr for the festschrift of Francis

Andersen published in 1987 and now available on the Witu website. xix The nominal term yoto, ‘trunk of a dead man’s body’ also means a log, and

may refer to a log as a bridge across a small gully, as in the former forest around

the foothills of Mt Yalibu. It then affords passage across the gully in either direction. xx The manipulative arms and the ambulatory legs were attached to the focal

trunk of the body. xxi The speaker of an Indo European language would never equate a track with a

door since they are separate things for westerners. But for speakers of TNG

languages which focus on relationships rather than things, the tracks are part of a

network of interconnected relationships, like a ‘string net bag, also signified by the

term ka that means both the track and its doors.


xxii The root pipi of the first term pipite signifies the pipi species of tree, whose bark,

if removed, grew again so that the tree would not die, encodes it as an icon for

eternal life. xxiii The second constituent <WAY> encoding the son is related metalinguistically to

the first proto iconic term for the sun, **pa’i, that encodes its symbolic function

when it stands at the zenith at noon during an equinox. This was the point in space-

time of the entry of the special seed child into the world to fix up what had gone

wrong with his father’s first general planting. (This is dealt with in detail in the

analysis of the Witu Zenith iconic schema.) Consistent with this, the first proto iconic

term for the sun is also the source of the following iconic pair of Enga terms: wái

‘seed’ and waí ‘message’.

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