The Bullroarer Atlas

No. CARROLL2024-011

Kiriwa sosam

Papua New Guinea · Arammba (Upper Morehead) language area, Kiriwa village, South Fly District, Western Province · Oceania · Sahul

Function not recorded

A long plain New Guinea blade, yellow-brown with a pointed end and an end hole carrying a small museum tag.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A New Guinea bull-roarer CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Image source

sosam

Source term: bullroarer: sosam

sosam: bullroarer (Yamfinder, Arammba, Kiriwa, Emil Mittag field data)

Arammba speakers at Kiriwa, in the upper Morehead River country of Papua New Guinea, call the bullroarer sosam. It is the name of Sosom, the giant whose roar sounded through the bullroarer cult of the Marind on the coast across the border, and the same word names the roarer at Wereave and at Sota. The three communities share their flute word too: the bamboo flute is fúwe fúwe in all of them.

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer, called sosam; its form is not recorded.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Matthew J. Carroll, Wolfgang Barth, Nicholas Evans et al., Yamfinder: The Southern New Guinea Lexical Database (University of Melbourne), concept 'bullroarer' View
  2. CLDF dataset derived from Carroll et al., "Yamfinder: The Southern New Guinea Lexical Database", Lexibank release v1.0 (2024) View
  3. J. van Baal, Dema: Description and Analysis of Marind-anim Culture (The Hague, 1966), pp. 267-268 View · archived
  • Wereave sosamPapua New Guinea · Wereave (Wereavere) village, western Morehead district near the Indonesian border, South Fly District, Western Province · Function not recorded
  • Wim wɑgrɑPapua New Guinea · Wim village, Pahoturi River country, South Fly District, Western Province · Function not recorded
  • Tais mburerePapua New Guinea · Tais village, southern Morehead district near the coast, South Fly District, Western Province · Function not recorded
  • Daraia áki kwèfanPapua New Guinea · Daraia village, north-east of Morehead station, Morehead district, South Fly District, Western Province · Function not recorded
  • Mibini saɸaŋgəPapua New Guinea · Mibini village, south of Morehead station, Morehead district, South Fly District, Western Province · Function not recorded
  • Namo mbulu and moyaŋgPapua New Guinea · Namo language area, south of the Morehead River toward Tais, Morehead district, South Fly, Western Province · Function not recorded

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.