In this article Descola outlines the way that oneiromancy (dream interpretation) works in the culture of the Jivaroan Achuar people of the Upper Amazon. The author attempts to show that the metaphoric interpretation of dreams depends on a system of rules and codes based on the gender of the dreamer and the content of the dream, rather than on a specific meaning for each symbol in a dream the way a dream dictionary works. The article is relevant to my research because the Jivaroan Achuar people live in the same area as the Pastaza Runa and have interacted with them for centuries. They share a similar culture to Runa people, who also have a rich culture of dreams, visions and dream interpretations which weaves itself into their personal and traditional narratives. It is useful for me to have this cultural information about dream interpretation in order to understand their perspective better.
-Dingemanse, Mark. The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu. S.l.: S.n., 2011. Print.
The purpose of this article is to explain the semantics and usage of ideophones in Siwu, a language spoken in Eastern Ghana. Another goal is to look at ideophones as they occur in natural discourse and to expand upon other linguistic research dealing with ideophones in general. This source is very applicable to my project as the author is writing about the same aspect of language that I want to study and explores many aspects of it. He also specifically addresses prosody in ideophonic utterances, usage in natural conversation and other aspects of the intersection between language use and culture that are relevant to the linguistic research in my project.
-Uzendoski, Michael A., Mark Hertica, and Edith Calapucha Tapuy. "The Phenomenology of Perspectivism: Aesthetics, Sound, and Power in Women’s Songs from Amazonian Ecuador." Current Anthropology 46.4 (2005): 656-62. Print.
This article discusses the singing style of Napo Runa women and how it shows their perspective of the relationship between nature and the self. It draws on work by Descola and Viveiros de Castro as well as Overing and Passes, who have all discussed the Amazonian view of nature as a part of human sociality. Songs in Runa culture are an important mode of exercising shamanic power and attracting both animals and humans, and one way that women's songs word is to make use of aesthetic features to embody other species and take on their traits. This article is relevant to my research because it discusses performative elements used consciously by Runa singers that may relate to similar performative elements in speech. It also provides insight into Runa interactions with and view of nature, which I am very interested in and is related to ideophone usage as well.
-Woodbury, Anthony C. "Meaningful Phonological Processes: A Consideration of Central Alaskan Yupik Eskimo Prosody." Language 63.4 (1987): 684-740. Print.
In this article, Woodbury argues that there are postlexical, optional phonological rules in the Central Alaskan Yupik Eskimo language (CAY) which modify meaning. These rules "assign stress, geminate consonants, lengthen vowels, and rearrange syllable structure" like other prosody rules. Woodbury asserts that this challenges the principle of articulation proposed by Martinet because in this case, phonological processes carry meaning. This article is relevant to my project because the idea that prosodic elements carry meaning is essential to my investigation of the performativity of ideophones.
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