In the latter example, what is the subject and what is the object? We
have to putfillers in if we are using English: (It) is eating me (in the)
head. The Melpa expression defies simple parsing of Melpa ideas about
the body and the person into the grammatical categories of subject and
object. Head and self are closely intertwined by synecdoche and meto-
nymy. In the expression here, also, the SOV order of words is not
followed but is if anything reversed, yet head is not the simple subject
of the sentence. The embodied psychology of the statement is quite
clear in experiential terms, whilethe grammatical analysis remains
complex.
The other feature of Melpa that is of note here (among many that could
be cited) is precisely the feature that Chomsky regarded as universal and
Everett pointed out is absent in Piraha: recursion.
The Melpa language has a facility for the enclavement of subordi-
nate clauses within longer utterances, where the subject of the
main clause is separate from the subject(s) of the subordinate
clause(s). The grammatical item thatexpressesthissituationisthe
participle, which takes a different shape according to whether its
subject is the same or different from the main verb’s subject, for
example:
moklpatepa noman tep mondopa purum
(after a while [he] considered matters and left)
(literally, being taking mind taking making to be [he] left)
Contrast this with:
elim mangkona moklnga-kin wuö mat-nt ruk orong
(while he was staying in his house some men came in [to the village]
(literally, he home being–with, men some–acting in came)
In the first sentence the – pa form marks the concordance of
the participle forms with the subject of the main verb, whereas in
the second sentence the–ngaform marks a disjunction with the
subject of the main verb. This grammatical feature enables Melpa
speakers to produce long and complex utterances in narrative form,
drawing in many contextual features of situations. A subtle view of
events and agency emerges. The grammatical form both produces
cultural form, in a sense, and itself is molded by Melpa social
patterns.
8 LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 75