Contents vPREFACE viiACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xSIGNORUM EXPLICATIO xiiA SHORT NOTE ON NOWAU xiiiMap A: Milne Bay Province xviiiMap B: Kitawa xviiiTable A: Nowau phonetic alphabet (Nolan) xviTable B: Nowau phonetic alphabet (Scoditti) xviiCHAPTER 1: Prologue, or Watowa: some methodological problems of poetic composition in an oral culture 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 'Internal, silent performance' and 'sounded performance' 5 1.3 'Rhetorical figures' and 'musical figures' 10 1.4 Composer and singer of a Nowau poetic formula 17 1.5 Original text and interpretative variations: the example of the foundation myth 20 1.6 Compositional pattern and narrative model 30 1.7 Trial, improvisation and definition of the text 34 1.8 Problems in transcribing a Nowau poetic formula 43 1.9 Musical text, vocal text, translatability and conceptual nonsense in Nowau poetic formulae 49CHAPTER 2: Development, or Kavira: characteristics of oral composition and performance in Nowau 63 2.1 Introduction 63 2.2 Nowau cognitive philosophy 68 2.3 The function of nona 'mind', and daba 'head' in the cognitive process 79 2.4 Initiation 83 2.5 Linguistic competence of the initiate 92 2.6 Apprenticeship 97 2.7 Composition 106 2.8 Musical design, musical fabric and 'word' 113 2.9 Performance/recitation 121CHAPTER 3: Nowau poetic formulae 125 3.1 Notes on the criteria adopted in selecting and editing the poetic formulae 125 3.2 Nowau poetic formulae: text with translation, interlinear gloss and commentary 126APPENDIX 1: List of concordances 301APPENDIX 2: List of frequencies (frequency order) 365LEXICON (NOWAU - ENGLISH) 377BIBLIOGRAPHY 398INDEX OF POETIC FORMULAE 407GENERAL INDEX 410

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