Oldal 151 [151]
OCR
A Goat AS BUDDHA’S THRONE: THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE IN MONGOLIAN RIDDLES — the wide mandate of the dative/locative case in Mongolian — the overlapping of certain word-categories (adjective and noun, verb and noun); the unspecificity or ‘generalized nature’ of the tense system (verbal roots with the alternating converb -j/¢ represent a generalized “‘present-future,’ the iterative ending -dag can be considered to be a kind of tenseless verbal form, and so on); — the presence of so-called ‘zero-meaning’ words with nearly all-encompassing referential sweep (for example, the word burgan, which can indicate a deity, a statue of a deity, or the Buddha [as in the expression 6ypxaxH 6arın]); and so on. THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF AMBIGUITY In looking over the history of the term ‘ambiguity’ in the Western world, one is struck by the fact that largely, it is perceived as a negative trait.* From its Latinate beginnings onward, ambiguity was associated with the dark and the enigmatic (in aenigmate, ‘darkly’).° Greek theoreticians saw it as a property to be removed from language, and in many respects, this view has not drastically changed." Of course, what strikes us in a survey of Mongolian riddles, is just how semantically and referentially productive ambiguity is, and that without this productive ambiguity, the cosmological function that seems to embrace many of these riddles would not operate in quite the same way, and would render ‘necessary semantic expansionism’ they engage in to be difficult, if not impossible. The role that ambiguity plays in these riddles compels one to confront the notion of lexical slippage and inherent polyreferentiality as an inherently desirable trait of language, not one to be eliminated or erased. PARADIGM SHIFTS: THE FUNCTION OF RIDDLES To acertain degree, effective examination of these riddles requires some fundamental paradigm shifts on the part of the researcher. Riddles in Western culture are often associated with demonstrations of wit and verbal prowess. Mongolian riddles are much closer to proverbs, formally, semantically, and symbolically, than in western languages. The extreme brevity of the form is preserved in both ‘genres’; the elision of subject, object, pronoun or verb is the norm. Rather then being cognitively ‘immediately obvious’, these riddles require deep knowledge of the nomadic lifestyle in order to interpret * This is perhaps more true than ever with the increasing use of computerized translation, where establishing programming features of disambiguation is crucial. (The opposite term, ambiguation — creating more ambiguity, creating opacity in language — does not seem to exist, which is a statement in and of itself.) Tiffany, Daniel: Lyric Substance: On Riddles, Materialism, and Poetic Obscurity. In: Critical Inquiry Vol. 28, No. 1, Things (Autumn, 2001), p. 81. Cerquiglini, Jacqueline et al. (ed.): L'ambiguité: cing etudes historiques, réunies par Irène Rosier. Presses Uuniversitaires de Lille, Lille 1988. See also Peppicello, William J.— Green, Thomas A.: The Language of Riddles: New Perspectives. Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1984, p. 22: ‘In ordinary speech, ambiguity is considered to be a linguistic accident.’ 149
