ABSTRACT
Once, inside a house on the Taiwanese Island of Lan Yü (Botel Tobago), I listened to a story about the creation of the world (see Røkkum 1991). Events were recited for me by a Yami Taiwanese aboriginal as if in a dream-like state of mind. I did not bother him with any questions. Suddenly he gave a start. Eyes wide open, he turned on me with a question: ‘Did you hear that?’ Taking notice of my blank response, he pointed towards a lizard on the wall just below the ceiling of the room. ‘The voice has changed.’ With this exclamation it became apparent to me that, out of what had been a mixed cacophony of chirps and buzzes, an identifiable sign with a vigour of its own now emerged. An exemplar of an ‘ensouled’ animation of the concerns of humans was located in the superstructure or the dwelling house, so much so that even the boards within the house were transformed into sounding boards for these concerns. A lizard’s presence became an augury in a field of societal values. The Yami narrator perceived a boundary not yet apparent to me, for he was being attentive to and immersing himself in activity on a sub-semantic plane of signification.
