Canoe of Death
Canoa del Muerte
Object Details
| Subject Language | Quechua, Pastaza |
| Language PID(s) | ailla:119502 |
| Title [Indigenous] | |
| Language of Indigenous Title | |
| Title | Canoe of Death |
| Language Community | |
| Country(ies) | Ecuador |
| Place Created | Puyo |
| Date Created | 1987 |
| Description [Indigenous] | |
| Language of Indigenous Description | |
| Description | A man making a canoe receives a portent of his own death. The recording of A Canoe of Death occurred within interviews and elicitation sessions which were designed to help me understand a word class widely known as ideophones. Ideophones are onomatopoeic or sense-imitative words that are abundant throughout languages of the world, although rather sparse in standard average European languages. When I began studying this dialect of Quechua there was vitually no published materials on its ideophones. The listener will notice, therefore, that I intrude into the narrative frequently with questions. This interview/elicitation format generated many compelling narratives. I would typically ask Luisa about a particular ideophone that I had made notes about, asking her if what I'd heard was something she could imagine herself saying. She often responded with far more information than I had requested, supplying me not only with more examples of an ideophone's usage, but also with unique personal experience narratives that were related in a didactic/explanatory spirit. A Canoe of Death was triggered by questions about the ideophones 'shaka' and 'kalya', both of which describe sounds and images of splitting. Luisa was suddenly reminded of the time her uncle had spent several months carving a dugout canoe from a single tree, only to have it split apart while in the final stages of its carving. Frequently, when she realized she had a story to tell me, she would say "now listen." At other times, she would slip imperceptibly into a narrative and I would ask her to re-begin, so that I could record her. In this way, the personal experience narratives were bounded off as texts from the interviews. |
| Genres | Narrative |
| Source Note | |
| References | |
| Contributor(s) Individual / Role | Nuckolls, Janis B. (Researcher) Anachu Cadena, Eloise (Speaker) |
| Contributor(s) Corporate / Role |
Media Files
There are 3 objects in this resource| Object | File Types | Access Level |
|---|---|---|
| QVZ001R001I001.wav | audio/x-wav | 1 |
| QVZ001R001I001.pdf | application/pdf | 1 |
| QVZ001R001I001.mp3 | audio/mp3 | 1 |
