PNG145 - ethnographic attestation
Nakanai
Papua New Guinea - West New Britain - Oceania - Sahul
Play / practical
siko Lakalai (Nakanai), an Austronesian language of West New Britain, PNG (Bileki dialect)
Source term: siko (e-)
a bullroarer, glossed as a children's toy
Etymology. Cited with the noun-marker prefix e- (e-siko); the dictionary gives no further derivation or literal meaning. (medium confidence)
Here the bullroarer is a toy. On New Britain's north coast the Nakanai call it siko and leave it to children, because the voice that truly commands fear comes from elsewhere: the valuku, clan-spirit masks that parade the villages each dry season, chasing and striking any woman or child who fails to flee. Where many peoples hid the sacred in a whirling blade, the Nakanai hid it behind a mask, and let the whirring wood dwindle to a plaything.
siko4 (e-) a bullroarer (children's toy).
Chowning & Goodenough, Dictionary of Lakalai (Nakanai), Lakalai-English, s.v. siko4; cf. English-Lakalai reversal: "bullroarer siko (e-)" (p. 261).
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; slit-gong occurrence; slit-gong use
- Function
- Gourlay Table 1 row 145 records Nakanai bullroarer occurrence/use and slit-gong occurrence/use; cited Finsch/Parkinson pages were not recovered for ritual or gender detail.
- Map confidence
- medium - alias_area
- Source location
- Table 1, row 145