CAMERON1885-001 - lexical attestation
Tati Tati (Cameron's Ta-ta-thi)
Australia - Murray River below the Murrumbidgee junction (Tati Tati country) - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Kalk English
Kalk: Tati Tati (Ta-ta-thi) name for the bullroarer, glossed by Cameron as 'word'; the neighbouring Wathi-wathi called the same instrument Kalari.
In Tati Tati speech the bullroarer's name was Kalk — 'that is to say, word,' as Cameron glossed it. He learned the term at the Burbung of their Wathi-wathi neighbours on the Murray, ceremonies the Ta-ta-thi travelled to attend, where a man hidden in the scrub whirled the humming instrument while a novice's tooth was knocked out. Among the peoples of the river junctions, each language named the same feared instrument its own way — and in this one, its name was Word itself.
The Ta-ta-thi call it Kalk, that is to say, word.
A. L. P. Cameron, 'Notes on Some Tribes of New South Wales,' Journal of the Anthropological Institute 14 (1885), p. 359 n.
- Object
- Named instrument only; Cameron describes no Ta-ta-thi object.
- Function
- Not recorded for the Tati Tati themselves; Cameron's footnote gives only their name for the instrument, glossed 'word'.
- Map confidence
- high - South Australian Museum Tati Tati language-group centroid (34 deg 45 min S, 142 deg 55 min E), Murray River below the Murrumbidgee junction.
- Source location
- printed p. 359 n. 1