Abstract

The following discussion of touch as a syntactic-semantic unit in ritual structures is based on an analogy of ritual and language postulating a 'deep structure' or a 'universal grammar' for rituals as presented by Frits Staal, Axel Michaels, and Naphtali Meshel. Following E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley in their cognitive approach to ritual competence and in identifying actions as building blocks in ritual structures, I propose an analysis of ritual events as a category with distinctive semantic and syntactic properties and within the framework of ritual communication and ritual competence. I extend Martina Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis for linguistic categories to the language-ritual analogy in the domains of semantics and syntax. The viability of this analytical framework is demonstrated by categorizing touching events in rituals in shared festivals in Kerala. I conclude the discussion by hypothesizing universal categories for ritual events and entities, and universal structural patterns partially analogous (perhaps even homologous) to categories and patterns used in Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis.

Highlights

  • Touching Events in Shared FestivalsThis essay explores sensory engagement in rituals and its implications for interreligious con- [1] tact based on participatory observation of shared festivals in Kerala (South India)

  • There is much more a ritual ‘grammarian’ can derive from theoretical linguistics.11. It seems to me, it is the identification of universal categories across ritual structures that is crucial in the quest after an abstract, ‘deep’ structure of rituals

  • Event categories can even be grammaticalized to modify other events and to function as light verbs or auxiliary verbs. Ritual events contain these four characteristics of lexical properties, argument [27] structures, temporal/spatial properties, and auxiliary functions. It is this characterization of ritual events that the present discussion relies on in support of the language-ritual analogy; the phenomenon of event-modifying verbs is of particular interest here as it hinges on a universal pattern of multi-functionality, which is, as an anonymous reviewer noted, a diagnostic tool for relating language-specific categories to a universal structure

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Summary

Ophira Gamliel

University of Glasgow, Scotland abstract The following discussion of touch as a syntactic-semantic unit in ritual structures is based on an analogy of ritual and language postulating a ‘deep structure’ or a ‘universal grammar’ for rituals as presented by Frits Staal, Axel Michaels, and Naphtali Meshel. I extend Martina Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis for linguistic categories to the language-ritual analogy in the domains of semantics and syntax. The viability of this analytical framework is demonstrated by categorizing touching events in rituals in shared festivals in Kerala. I conclude the discussion by hypothesizing universal categories for ritual events and entities, and universal structural patterns partially analogous (perhaps even homologous) to categories and patterns used in Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis

Touching Events in Shared Festivals
Religious Diversity in Kerala History
Ritual as Language
Units of Ritual and Universal Categories in Linguistic Terms
Ritual Events as a Category
Ritual Competence in Shared Festivals in Kerala
Touching Events and Religions in Contact
Sensory Ritual Events and Socioreligious Communication
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