The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its Cultural Context [Hardcover]

Gerrit J. van Enk (Author), Lourens de Vries (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195105516 | ISBN-13: 978-0195105513 | Publication Date: July 3, 1997

Irian Jaya is the official name of the western half of New Guinea, a province of Indonesia since the 1960s. Its inhabitants are generally untouched by civilization, and most of their hundreds of native languages and cultures remain unstudied. Van Enk and de Vries gained access to one of the most isolated parts of Irian Jaya in order to study the Korowai, a tribe in southern Irian Jaya. The Korowai still use stone tools, live in tree-houses, and have no knowledge of the outside world. Van Enk and de Vries provide the first study of the Korowai language and culture. They reproduce oral texts that show patterns of grammar, discourse, and culture, and discuss the phonological, morphological, and syntactical aspects of the language. In the process, van Enk and de Vries reveal a number of key semantic fields and conceptual patterns such as kinship, counting, the role of lunar phases, and Korowai cosmology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Readers with field experience in comparable communities may find the wealth of material presented in [this book] particularly remarkable."--Anthropological Linguistics

"An important contribution to the fields of linguistics and anthropology, as Irian Jaya is the most poorly known area in the world for both disciplines."--William Foley, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands

"...this is an excellent work for people seeking information about the languages and cultures of peoples of southern Irian Jaya, and a useful source of information on Papuan language structures and oral traditions more generally....[a] valuable work."--Language in Society

About the Author

Gerrit J. van Enk is a Minister of The Reformed Church of Enumatil (The Netherlands), and also teaches cultural anthropology at the missiological Institute of Reformed Theological Training in the Netherlands.

Lourens de Vries is a Research Fellow of Leiden University in the Department of Languages and Cultures of South-East Asia and Oceania, and a professor of Bible translation at the Free University of Amsterdam.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195105516
• ISBN-13: 978-0195105513
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,859,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not only for the Linguist, October 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its Cultural Context (Hardcover)

This is the first book that describes a more inside view of the Korowai. The culture of this lowland tribe in Papua (Irian Jaya) has suffered a lot in the last few years. After some articles have been published in magazines, to descibe the so called "tree-house people", there has been a overrun with tourist-groups. Also they have Sandal-wood in the area, thats why many indonesians went in the forest to buy it from the Korowai. There is more as Linguistic information in this book. I t describes also the material culture, myths and the first contact with the outside world.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Essentializing but strong descriptive work, November 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its Cultural Context (Hardcover)

The book is an interesting reading for specialists in the field. It is the result of classical, careful empirical descriptive linguistics. I have only one remark to make: the book essentialises the Korowai to an unheard extent (first-contact-wish of ethnographers willing to make and break a career?). Of course the Korowai were no 'untouched', 'virgin' people at all. They have a history both with their fellow countrymen and with the outside world that goes beyond what the authors claim. It is a pitty that competent ethnographers still reduce their 'objects' to their Eurocentric gaze. This way they contribute to an even greater influx of foreigners into the territories of the Korowai.