Synopsis

This collection of ten texts offers a unique glimpse into the language and culture of the Muyu, a Papuan people living in the heart of New Guinea. It features narratives from six storytellers, all of which have been transcribed, translated, and linguistically annotated.

The presentation follows a two-part structure: first, a parallel-text format with Muyu and English arranged in columns; second, an interlinearized version for detailed linguistic analysis. The texts revolve around two central themes—myths of origin and accounts of encounters with animals.

A brief introduction to the Muyu language and its speakers precedes the texts, providing essential context for readers from both linguistic and anthropological backgrounds.

Synopsis:

This collection of fourteen texts in Komnzo offers an insight into the language and culture of the Farem people, their storytelling tradition, oral history, mythology and everyday life. It contains stories from nine narrators, which were transcribed, translated and analysed by the researcher with the help of the Komnzo language committee. All texts are presented in a parallel text version arranged in columns (Komnzo/English) and in an interlinearised and glossed version. The book focuses thematically on landscape, place names and locality. It includes a description and analysis of the way Komnzo speakers conceptualise this semantic domain.

This publication is complemented by a dataset available from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14267762