http://hdl.handle.net/10092/568 2013-04-17T07:37:58Z http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7402 Title: Uncertainty as an organizing principle of phonology Authors: Hume, E.; Wedel, A. Abstract: In this talk, we propose a unified account of patterns of phonological enhancement and reduction that occur at sub-lexical and higher levels. Central to the proposal is the view that language is conceived of as a system of optimizing communication through efficiently resolving uncertainty in the mapping between signal and meaning. Patterns of enhancement and reduction are seen as responses to the need to reduce uncertainty associated with predicting the outcome of a message. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7381 Title: Taming and Training in The Human Use of Elephants: The Case of Nepal, Past, Present and Future Authors: Locke, P. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7380 Title: Animals, persons, gods: Kaleidoscopic ontologies in a multispecies total institution Authors: Locke, P. Abstract: Based on fieldwork in Chitwan, Nepal, this paper explores the kaleidoscopic manner in which handlers accord ontological states to their elephants in the multispecies total institution of the sarkari hattisar, or government elephant stable, which operates under the administrative authority of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. Representing a highly ordered space in which the lives of elephants and humans are intimately bound together to fulfil the objectives of protected area management, biodiversity research, and nature tourism, the hattisar is a place where elephants are conceived as animals, as persons, and as gods. I demonstrate that the attributed states of animality, personhood, and divinity are most clearly revealed in correspondence with modes of relation that I designate as domination, companionship, and veneration. However, discrete categories of being are not exclusively allied to particular modes of relation. Rather, they are variably emphasized during certain activities, times, and spaces. Much like the child’s toy that produces changing images through the combination of mirrors and coloured glass, this has the effect of yielding patterned assertions of being that constantly shift. Boundaries between animality, personhood, and divinity are understood then as permeable and contingent, conflicting even, but nonetheless coextensive. As a result of this seemingly confounding situation, the implicitly humanist epistemology of ethnographic fieldwork is challenged, forcing a reformulation of my research as not merely a study of the human use of animals, but instead as an ethnographic study of two forms of life, only one of which happens to be human. Description: http://aaa.confex.com/aaa/2012/webprogrampreliminary/Session6589.html/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7289 Title: Formal Instruction and Apprenticeship Learning in Nepali Elephant Handlers Authors: Locke, P. Abstract: Preliminary fieldwork conducted in the Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal in the summer of 2001 confirmed the significance of apprenticeship learning for the maintenance and utilisation of the elephant resources that are so crucial to the operations of the park. In the past, elephants in Nepal were used for big game hunting, transportation, logging and other agricultural work. But since the inception of Chitwan as Nepal’s first National Park in 1973, a new era of elephant deployment has been inaugurated, in which their main uses are in providing jungle safaris for tourists, assisting in the monitoring of large mammals like tiger and rhinoceros, as well as engaging in anti-poaching reconnaissance. 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z