Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). What does Jukurrpa (‘Dreamtime’, ‘the Dreaming’) mean? A semantic and conceptual journey of discovery. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2015(1), 43-65.
This study proposes a detailed explication for the Australian Aboriginal Jukurrpa concept, phrased exclusively in simple cross-translatable words. The various components of the explication are justified. The authors do not claim to have necessarily arrived at a full, perfect or correct lexical-semantic analysis, although in principle this is the goal of semantic analysis. Rather, their purpose is to share a hermeneutic process and its results. The guiding framework for the process is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to meaning analysis.
Jukurrpa is the word used in Warlpiri for what is referred to in English as the Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’, or ‘the Dreaming’. The same concept is referred to in Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara as tjukurpa, in Arrernte as altyerre, etc. After a short introduction, the paper is organized around successive stages in the evolution of the current explication, which is partitioned into multiple sections and depicts a highly ramified and multi-faceted concept, albeit one with great internal coherence. The authors present and discuss four semantic explications, each built on – and, hopefully, improving upon – its predecessor.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
