The Arts and Crafts of Literacy by Andrea Brigaglia Mauro Nobili

Author:Andrea Brigaglia, Mauro Nobili [Andrea Brigaglia, Mauro Nobili]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783110541403
Google: eSw5xQEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2017-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

3Author’s biography

Almamy’s handwritten copies of the Bamana texts were accompanied by several notes, written by him in French, explaining their provenance. These include statements about the identities of the author and the owner of the manuscripts, as well as the alleged date and reasons for composition. Both Almamy, with whom I discussed these texts in Bamako in 1992, and Bory Bary, whom I first met in San in 1998, confirmed that the latter was the source of information for these notes.

Almamy’s French notes clearly imply that a certain ‘Amadou Bary’ was the author of the texts.358 However, when I discussed them with him in 1992, Almamy was not so sure; he suggested that Amadou Bary may have merely copied or collected the texts. However, Bory Bary, both in 1998 and on several subsequent occasions, confirmed that his father had written the texts.

This claim is supported by additional evidence. Bory Bary confirms that his father spoke Bamana. Furthermore, the texts include several locutions that suggest they were written by a non-native speaker. In two instances, the relationship between a living being and a part of its body is indicated by the particle ka (which normally marks alienable possession) rather than by the zero marker, indicating inalienable possession. Thus, text II, line 10, reads i k tonna, which I interpret as i ka tɔn na (‘the nape of your neck’), whereas a more typical formulation, by a native speaker, would be simply i tɔn na. Similarly, an invocation addressed to a tree reads mīn bii ka bulūwla (V.7), that is min b’i ka buluw la (‘which are in your leaves’), whereas a native speaker would typically say i buluw. Furthermore, the name of San’s famous, permanent-water lake is given as Sankeer(e) (I.11 and I.13), whereas its name is normally pronounced Sanke or Sange by the Bamana-speaking inhabitants of San. Since -re is the Fulfulde locative suffix, this specifically suggests that the writer was a Fulfulde-speaker. There are two other atypical formulations in these texts (III.7, IV.4 – see more below), but in these instances, it is difficult to know whether one is dealing with unidiomatic expression by a non-native speaker, errors by the copyist, or even language change. Thus, there is no longer any reason to doubt that Amadou Bary, father of Bory, was the author of these texts.

The other major piece of information contained in Almamy’s notes concerns the date of composition of these texts – indicated as the year ‘1911’. When I met them, neither Almamy nor Bory Bary could explain this date, which was presumably based either on a note associated with the texts (but then, why wasn’t it copied?), or on that of another document found near them, or on oral information transmitted by Bory Bary. The precision of this date contrasts awkwardly with the otherwise limited information Almamy and Bory possessed about these manuscripts, whom the latter found by rummaging through his father’s belongings.359 It is also curious that – if written by Bory’s father – this date would have been expressed in the Gregorian calendar only (omitting the hijri year).

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