Help with Identification please

[guwaya]

Originally Posted by kai

Just to add a comment regarding the correct translation of Groneman's original:

In German, two different meanings seem to be possible and I have a really tough time to decide which may be the intended one.

Interpretation 1:
ukiran of human and animal form,
(ukiran) of jagung form (corn cobs or flowers called gana), and
also some tree roots resembling a human figure.

This may be the intended meaning but it would be only unequivocal if Groneman had completed the enumeration:
(ukiran) of human form (made from tree roots naturally resembling a human figure).
I feel Groneman avoided this more tedious writing for stylistic reasons but grammatically this is not correct (neither with nor without repeating the word ukiran).

Interpretation 2:
ukiran of the form of human and animal, and
ukiran of the form of jagung (corn) cobs or flowers which are called gana (as is also true for some tree-roots resembling a human figure).

For this interpretation there is the crucial "and" missing: In German, one would have expected a "sowie" for stylistic reasons. A word can go missing in print but in this case it doesn't appear to be a printer's error since there's no punctuation mark (i. e. comma) in front of an "und" or "sowie" in German. Still, it could be an enumeration of just 2 alternatives separated only with an ideosyncratic comma...

What are the Dutch grammar rules for enumerations since this was Groneman's language?


BTW, is the tree of life interpretation for the corn cob hilt type undisputed?

Regards,
Kai

Hello,

I think you are correct - even if reading just fluently in German there could be two interpretation:

There are ukiran in form of jagung or flowers which are called gana

1. and additional there are ukiran made from tree-roots resembling the human figure (seperately from gana).

2. as well as ukiran made from tree-roots resembling the human figure (also called gana)


Anyway, I think, just because Gronemans motherlanguage seemed to have been Dutch it makes no sense to study the dutch grammer for clearing the general question here. It will not be possible to come to a 100% verified conclusion and only an assumption based on the different languages could be made which possibly could have leed to a misunderstanding. I am myself a Groneman fan but nobody is perfect and grammer mistakes are easily done - if they were done - who knows?! And who wants to decide this - after which criteria?

It seems that the use of gana is only to read at Groneman (the others took it from Groneman) and that it is not confirmed by other researchers upon own researches. If this is the fact, the use of the term gana will always have to be used with a questionmark or with the hint to Groneman's reference.

Regards