Well, busy again, but thankfully I am two weeks in advance of where I need to be with editing. Granted the chapter after that is new and I have to write the whole thing, but hopefully after that I should be good for a while.
The chapter I have to write is very technical in terms of Ethnographic studies and what sort of things Anthropologists do when they are out if the field. It will cover a number of facts about the Mother's Children, such as tribal size, various features, kinship patterns, language patterns, ritual behavior, diet, hunting practices, clothing, etc... the basic meat and potatoes of drawing up and picture of a new culture. Of course it is making me crazy as I have to hunt down stuff from the Ethnographies of the Matse people, the closest tribe to the Mother's Children since they are also in the Panoan language group.
The Matse are a really interesting tribe as one of their distinguishing features is the fact that they have whiskers that they push into their skin, making them look like cats. It's actually kind of cool. Their world view is also pretty neat. I had to learn about the Matse to help frame the Mother's Children correctly. That wasn't all that easy, let me tell you. Not only did I need to learn about the various tribal cultures of the Amazon basin, but I also had to learn all about the career of being a professional Anthropologist and Academic. That part was easier/ harder to do as the stuff I knew in the English and History Depts. was not exactly the same.
Any way, if you are interested, Google the Matse and learn something about a really interesting people and that will give you an insight into the Mother's Children.
Comments
The most...
...authoritative, though certainly not uncontroversial, publicly accessible listing of articles on Matsés as a language can probably be had at ethnologue.com, though subscription privileges or lack of proficiency in Portuguese might prevent most people here from reading more than abstracts on some articles (I didn't really look too hard, so I couldn't say for sure, but many such articles are behind subscription walls; Amazonian languages aren't my field). ODIN doesn't appear to have any articles listed for the language. SIL has a survey article of the languages of the area, though I confess I haven't read it, due to a lack of time. Unfortunately, I can't precisely toot the horn of some of my friends and teachers about this, as they are working on an entirely different set of languages in that general area.
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
Formerly known as "momonoimoto"
Languages
That group, I am afraid, is completely outside my area of expertise.
I have been having lots of
I have been having lots of fun with this story. I wrote a good portion of the frame and have a timeline of events but the big work is actually during the editing process where I add stuff. This has allowed me to delve deeper into the field and the culture of the nearest tribe to the Mother's Children. There are linguistic similarities involved but differences as well. Philology is fun stuff, as is Anthropology.
Heather
We are the change that will save the world.
Heather
We are the change that will save the world.
Interesting
I did see this on the wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mats%C3%A9s
Hugs!
Grover
Isn't it pretty cool stuff.
Isn't it pretty cool stuff. The human adaptability to things is pretty impressive. The Matse focus on the Jaguar in most things, hence the whiskers they add to themselves. The Mother's Children are not like that, having a different focus which results in different interactions to the world.
Heather
We are the change that will save the world.
Heather
We are the change that will save the world.