Bwénaado: An Ethnolexicological Study of a Culturally Salient Word in Cèmuhî (New Caledonia)

Abstract

Ever since people have come together in communities, they have felt the need to regulate and control their relationships with members of other groups. One way of building and maintaining a stable society is by sharing wealth. New Caledonia has developed its own unique system of exchange, referred to as la coutume by its French-speaking inhabitants and by the Melanesian part of the population, which also uses indigenous terms that have relatively high cultural visibility and can thus be considered culturally salient. This paper focuses on one such word, bwénaado, and aims to demonstrate that it reflects an important cultural value in Cèmuhî, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 3300 people dispersed along the north-east coast and in the valleys of New Caledonia’s rugged interior. To the best of our knowledge, no detailed treatment of bwénaado exists. Our semantic analysis therefore breaks new ground. Three different meanings of the word (roughly, ‘large-scale customary celebration’, ‘customary ceremony’ and ‘customary gift’) are distinguished. It will be argued that, even though the Kanak social exchange system (in which all three meanings are highly relevant) seems to be linked to a universal principle of reciprocity, it is highly culture-specific. To ensure utmost respect for this cultural specificity and to break out of the prison walls of the English language, Natural Semantic Metalanguage will be used to frame the description, and applied ethnolinguistics will form the backdrop against which the description is carried out.

Appendix: Cèmuhî Exponents of Semantic Primes

waeo, wogo, pace, naado, apulie, een	Substantives
i, you, someone, something~thing, people, body
toto, be-	Relational substantives
kind, part
-ce, wien, ite	Determiners
this, the same, other~else
ceiu/a, alo, (i)-cei, tai, tome~hiwon, mehin	Quantifiers
one, two, some, all, much~many, little~few
wae, ta	Evaluators
good, bad
ubwo, wahin	Descriptors
big, small
temehi, niimihi, nime-(n), time nime-(n), tene, alihi, tene	Mental predicates
know, think, want, don’t want, feel, see, hear
pii, pwooti, ju	Speech
say, words, true
pwo, tuie, penem	Actions, events, movement
do, happen, move
mu, pwo, te	Location, existence, specification
be (somewhere), there is, be (someone/something)
tong	Possession
(is) mine
mulie, mele	Life and death
live, die
he-me~tan, jenaa, anabun, ite, mwo, emwonu, benaamwon, benaamwon	Time
when~time, now, before, after, a long time, a short time, for some time, moment
we~benaamwon, eni, pwo-(n), haahi-(n), koja, je-, duaa-(n), he-(n), ti	Place
where~place, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside, touch
time, hie, temehi, be, mepie	Logical concepts
not, maybe, can, because, if
nihe, koja	Intensifier, augmentor
very, more
wieli	Similarity
like~as

1. Notes • Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e. they can have other, additional meanings • Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes • They can be formally, i.e. morphologically, complex • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with ~) • Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties