Full Description
Certain grammatical elements help hearers know how propositions are conceptually related: Does a given proposition advance the foregrounded event line, or not? Initiate versus continue an event chain? Indicate that one proposition belongs to a different "mental space" from the previous one? Provide background information? Studies in this volume show that African languages sometimes support, but often refute the idea that perfective aspect or past tense marks the narrative event line. Rather, languages may employ clause level constructions, conjunctions or connectives, tonal melodies on verbs or subjects, specialized auxiliaries, special verb forms and even dependent clause and imperfective aspect forms. Often, correlation of such grammatical elements with the event line is a subcase of a more general function. Analyses in this volume contribute to developing a typology of the expression of discourse functions, a field of research which has so far been minimally addressed from a typological perspective.
Contents
1. Preface; 2. Discourse structuring and typology: How strong is the link with aspect? (by Shirtz, Shahar); 3. Nilo-Saharan; 4. Aspect and thematic clause combining in Maa (Nilotic) (by Payne, Doris L.); 5. Isolate; 6. Main event line structure and aspect in Sandawe narratives (by Eaton, Helen); 7. Afro-Asiatic; 8. The functions of Non-Final verbs and their aspectual categories in Northern Mao (Omotic) narrative (by Ahland, Michael); 9. Aspect-Mood and discourse in Kabyle (Berber) spoken narratives (by Mettouchi, Amina); 10. Niger-Congo; 11. The roles of Dissociative and (Non-)Completive morphology in structuring Totela (Bantu) narratives (by Crane, Thera Marie); 12. Narrative uses of the U t-Ma'in (Kainji) Bare Verb form (by Paterson, Rebecca); 13. Rethinking narrative tenses based on data from Nalu (Atlantic) and Yeyi (Bantu) (by Seidel, Frank); 14. The Factative and the Perfective-Inchoative in Cuuramma (Turka, Gur) (by Suggett, Colin); 15. Aspectual and storyline tension in Emai's (Edoid) narrative template (by Schaefer, Ronald P.); 16. Topic Index; 17. Language Index
