Linguistics and Ethno-ornithology: Bird songs and bird stories from the Western Province of Papua New Guinea

Julia Colleen Miller

About the video

In 2012 and 2013 I travelled to the Western Province of Papua New Guinea as part of a linguistic and ethno-ornithological documentation team. During these trips the team conducted many early-morning bird walks. These walks were an engaging, natural elicitation environment for collecting fluent, unscripted language as well as carefully pronounced target words. Armed with a head-mounted microphone attached to our main language consultant, a shot-gun microphone to capture birdsong from a distance and a pack of eager local bird spotters, the team collected hours of birdsong and ethno-ornithological and linguistic content.

This video is a sampling of these experiences. Submerge yourself in a soundscape of these early morning bird walks across the savannah lands and around the freshwater swamp forests of remote Papua New Guinea. Hear the birdcalls and learn the Nen names for birds such as the Greater Black Coucal (tibrom), the Pinon Imperial Pigeon (qébti mémék), the Mangrove Gerygone (sañ dnär), Zoe Imperial Pigeon (wk dédir), the Trumpet Manucode (boaboa), the Raggiana bird-of-paradise (kakayam), the Grey Shrike-thrush (kokopasi), the Large-tailed Nightjar (drondro), and many others. Woven together in this video are photos, videos, audio soundscapes, birdsong, short stories in the Nen language, and visualisations of acoustic data.

The video has six parts (or chapters), starting with an introduction situating the viewer geographically and auditorily. The next chapter is a short account of the multilingual bird, sañ dnär, and the languages it can 'speak'. The next two chapters are short narratives that offer English and Nen subtitles. The first one is called A Story of Tibrom in which our Nen language specialist Jimmy Nébni discusses the bird's role in waking people up in the early morning hours, harkening back to the times of head-hunters in the region. The second narrative is called A Story of Zo. Here Jimmy recounts a tale of the clever zo and how it protects its food storehouse from the threat of fire. The next chapter shows a moving sonogram of birdsong. A sonogram, or spectrogram, is one method of visualising the acoustic signal of bird vocalisation, plotting frequency by time. The sonogram in this video was generated using Raven Lite. As the audio of birdsong plays, I highlight the frequencies and note the birds that are producing the calls, allowing the viewer to follow along. This is first played at normal speed, then again at a slower speed to allow for more information about the birds to be accessed by the viewer. The final chapter is the outro in which I present our participants and mention those who have funded this documentation project.

In between each of the chapters, I have included four short interludes. These are 60 seconds each of birdsong with offerings from the online Nen dictionary, created by Nicholas Evans, which was built upon the recordings and interviews from these and earlier field trips to Bimadbn Village. In addition to the dictionary entries, I offer two linguistic spectrograms of human speech, in which Jimmy pronounced the names of two birds, drondro and qébti zir. These spectrograms were generated using the Praat software.

All recordings generated from this documentation project can be found at the Language Archive, at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (see below). These recordings have become a very rich corpus of materials that can be used by linguists, ethno-ornithologists, anthropologists, and importantly, the materials have been and are continuing to be repatriated to the language communities in meaningful ways.

Recourses and works cited

Contributors to the documentation project in Bimadbn, PNG

Jimmy Nébni, Nen language specialist and local bird consultant; Nicholas Evans, linguist, transcriptions, and translations; Chris Healey, anthropologist/ethnobiologist, bird specialist; Julia Colleen Miller, linguist, recordist, archivist; the many residents of Bimadbn Village, PNG, all of whom made wonderful hosts, bird and language specialists, and friends.

Archived materials

• Project page
  
  
• Archive page

Online Nen dictionary

• Evans, Nicholas. 2019. Nen dictionary. Dictionaria 8. 1-5005. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5526459. Accessed 21 August 2022.

Spectrograms (sonograms)

• Praat (Designed for use by linguists and speech scientists on human speech): Boersma, Paul and Weenink, David (2022). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer software]. Version 6.2.16. Accessed 18 August 2022.
  
  
• Raven Lite (Designed for use with acoustically active animals): K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (2022). Raven Lite: Interactive Sound Analysis Software (Version 2.0.4) [Computer software]. Ithaca, NY: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Accessed 21 August 2022.

Bird Image Attribution List

Nen name	Common name	Scientific name	Attribution
boaboa	Trumpet Manucode	Phonygammus keraudrenii	William Matthew Hart, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, or Bower-birds. v.2 (1891–1898)  Digital source
brum	Coroneted Fruit Dove	Ptilinopus coronulatus	Joseph Wolf, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1858)  Digital source
drondro	Large-tailed Nightjar	Caprimulgus macrurus	Broinowski, Gracius J., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: The Birds of Australia (1891)  Digital source
gondako	Red-bellied Pitta	Erythropitta erythrogaster	Nicolas Huet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Nouveau recueil de planches coloriées d'oiseaux (1838)  Digital source
kakayam	Raggiana bird-of-paradise	Paradisaea raggiana	Elliot, Daniel Giraud, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: A monograph of the Paradiseidae or birds of paradise (1873)  Digital source
kogal	Yellow-faced Myna	Mino dumonti	Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source (possible): Voyage Autour du Monde exécuté pendant les années 1836–1837 sur la corvette La Bonite, commandé par M. Valliant: Zoologie (1841)   Digital source
kokopasi	Grey Shrike-thrush	Colluricincla harmonica	Broinowski, Gracius J., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: The Birds of Australia (1891)  Digital source
krara	Eclectus Parrot	Eclectus roratus	Herbert Goodchild, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Proceedings of the Zoological Society (PZS) (1902)  Digital source
kudu	Southern Crowned Pigeon	Goura scheepmakeri	Otto Finsch and Joseph Smit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1875)  Digital source
mok	Noisy Friarbird	Philemon corniculatus	Silvester Diggles, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Plate from Companion to Gould's Handbook; or, Synopsis of the birds of Australia (1877)  Digital source
qébti mémék	Pinon Imperial Pigeon	Ducula pinon	Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Quoy, J. R. C. and Gaimard, J. P. 1824. Voyage autour du monde de l’Uranie and Physicienne, zoologie  Digital source
sañ dnär	Mangrove Gerygone	Gerygone levigaster	John Gould, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: The Birds of Australia (1840–1848)  Digital source
Siroro	Yellow-billed Kingfisher	Syma torotoro	Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Print in the collection Iconographia Zoologica (between 1700 and 1880)  Digital source
skoptete	Spotted Honeyeater	Xanthotis polygrammus	Joseph Smit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: Catalogue of the birds in the British Museum. Volume 9 (1884)  Digital source
tibrom	Greater Black Coucal	Centropus menbeki	Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: DUPERREY, Louis-Isidore. Voyage autour du Monde, executé per ordre du Roi, sur la Corvette La Coquille de sa Majesté, pendant les annies 1822, 1823, 1824 et 1825.  Digital source
wambosänsa	Grey Whistler	Pachycephala simplex	Elizabeth Gould, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: John Gould’s Birds of Australia (between 1840 and 1848)  Digital source
wk dédir	Zoe Imperial Pigeon	Ducula zoeae	Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: DUPERREY, Louis-Isidore. Voyage autour du Monde, executé per ordre du Roi, sur la Corvette La Coquille de sa Majesté, pendant les annies 1822, 1823, 1824 et 1825.  Digital source
zir	Greater Streaked Lory	Chalcopsitta scintillata	Bernard Quaritch (Firm); George Philip and Son; Keulemans, J. G.; Mivart, St. George Jackson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: A monograph of the lories, or brush-tongued parrots: composing the family Loriidae, Bernard Quaritch (Firm); George Philip and Son; Keulemans, J. G.; Mivart, St. George Jackson (1896)  Digital source
zo	Fawn-breasted Bowerbird	Chlamydera cerviniventris	Elizabeth Gould, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: John Gould’s Birds of Australia (between 1840 and 1848)  Digital source

Bird Song Attribution List