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Chapter 14. A typological study of tail-head linkage constructions
Abstract
This book aims at investigating discourse phenomena (i.e., linguistic elements and constructions that help to manage the organization, flow, and outcome of communication) from a typological and cross-linguistic perspective. Although it is a well-established idea in functional-typological approaches that grammar is shaped by discourse use, systematic typological cross-linguistic investigations on discourse phenomena are relatively rare. This volume aims at bridging this gap, by integrating different linguistic subfields, such as discourse analysis, pragmatics, and typology. The contributions, both theoretically and empirically oriented, focus on a broad variety of discourse phenomena (ranging from discourse markers to discourse function of grammatical markers, to strategies that manage the discourse and information flow) while adopting a typological perspective and considering typologically distant languages.
... The sequential device ǝtǝkǝymǝŋ 'and then' seems to come from ǝtǝk-ǝy-mǝŋ 'do.like.this/that=ADV=SEQ' (having done like this/that) and seems to have participated in sequential tail-head linkage (see Olguín Martínez 2023 for more examples of this diachronic development). ...
The study explores the form and function of ‘when’, ‘while’, ‘after’, ‘before’, and ‘until’ clauses in a variety sample of 218 languages. First, it is demonstrated that temporal adverbial clauses tend to be encoded with conjunctions and converbs in the database. A chi-squared goodness-of-fit test shows that ‘after’, ‘before’, and ‘until’ meanings are strongly and similarly associated with monofunctional clause-linking devices cross-linguistically. ‘While’ meanings are ambivalent, and ‘when’ meanings are strongly encoded with polyfunctional clause-linking devices. Second, the paper also explores the polyfunctionality patterns of temporal adverbial clause-linking devices. While the semantic polyfunctionality patterns attested in the present research align, for the most part, with those documented by other typological studies, there are a number of patterns that have been neglected in the typological literature, such as the polyfunctionality pattern between ‘while’ and ‘without’, between ‘after’ and ‘lest’, and between ‘before’ and ‘lest’, among others.
In addition to indicating whether or not events have come to an end at a reference time (temporal function), the opposition between imperfective aspect and perfective aspect in Ecuadorian Siona can also fulfil a discourse function. Imperfective forms of the verb caye ‘to say’ can signal that a speech act will be followed by a reaction or an addition, whereas perfective forms can signal that this is not the case. This discourse function is related to the temporal function through metaphor. This particular discourse function is an addition to the typology of non-temporal functions of verbal aspect.
Studies on individual Amazonian languages have shown that these languages can contribute to informing and refining our theories of counterfactual conditional constructions. Still missing, however, is an attempt at exploring this complex sentence construction across different genetic units of the Amazonia in a single study. The paper explores counterfactual conditionals in a sample of 24 Amazonian languages. Special attention is paid to the range of TAM markers and clause-linking devices used in counterfactual conditionals in the Amazonian languages in the sample. As for TAM markers, it is shown that protases tend to be unmarked (they do not occur with any TAM values), and apodoses tend to occur with irrealis or frustrative marking. As for clause-linking devices, it is shown that most Amazonian languages in the sample contain counterfactual conditionals occurring with non-specialized clause-linking devices. This means that the distinction between counterfactual conditionals and other types of conditionals (e.g., real/generic) is not grammaticalized in clause-linking devices. Instead, the counterfactual conditional meaning resides in the combination of specific TAM markers. The paper also pays close attention to the distribution of TAM markers and clause-linking devices in counterfactual conditional constructions in the Vaupés. In particular, special attention is paid to how Tariana counterfactual conditional construction have been shaped by Tucanoan languages through language contact.
The study explores the form and function of ‘when’, ‘while’, ‘after’, ‘before’, and ‘until’ clauses in a variety sample of 218 languages. First, it is demonstrated that temporal adverbial clauses tend to be encoded with conjunctions and converbs in the database. A chi-squared goodness-of-fit test shows that ‘after’, ‘before’, and ‘until’ meanings are strongly and similarly associated with monofunctional clause-linking devices cross-linguistically. ‘While’ meanings are ambivalent, and ‘when’ meanings are strongly encoded with polyfunctional clause-linking devices. Second, the paper also explores the polyfunctionality patterns of temporal adverbial clause-linking devices. While the semantic polyfunctionality patterns attested in the present research align, for the most part, with those documented by other typological studies, there are a number of patterns that have been neglected in the typological literature, such as the polyfunctionality pattern between ‘while’ and ‘without’, between ‘after’ and ‘lest’, and between ‘before’ and ‘lest’, among others.
Las cláusulas adverbiales, en especial las que integran un sistema de conmutación de la referencia (switch-reference), pueden funcionar más allá de los límites sintácticos y establecer enlaces con el contenido proposicional de la oración precedente. Este tipo de enlaces entre cadenas clausales es conocido como ‘enlaces tail-head’ (tail-head linkage) (de Vries 2005) o ‘construcciones puente’ (bridging devices) (Dixon 2009) y fueron identificadas en muchas lenguas de Sudamérica, Oceanía y Europa. Este estudio se centra en la comparación tipológica de los enlaces tail-head en una muestra de lenguas de la rama Chinchay (qiibc) de la familia quechua (Sudamérica). El corpus de las lenguas seleccionadas cuenta con dos tipos principales de construcciones. La primera consiste en una repetición del predicado de la oración anterior en la cláusula dependiente y, la segunda, incluye verbos genéricos de denotación amplia que resumen el contexto precedente. Estas construcciones son un recurso predominante en la organización de las narrativas en estas lenguas y presentan una considerable variación formal y distribucional en el discurso.
This book examines the coding of the three coordination relations of combination, contrast and alternative between states of affairs on the basis of a 74 language sample, with special focus on the languages spoken in Europe. It constitutes the first systematic inquiry so far conducted on the cross-linguistic coding of coordination, as defined in cognitive and pragmatic terms. This research shows that the 'and-but-or' coding system which is typical of Central-Western Europe appears to be extremely rare outside Europe, where a great variation in the coding of coordination is attested. This cross-linguistic variation, however, is not random, but is crucially constrained by the interaction of economic principles with the semantic properties of the individual relations expressed. A fine-grained functional systematization of coordination is proposed and described by means of implicational patterns and semantic maps. This work brings together a broad cross-linguistic perspective and a detailed semantic analysis, largely based on new and comparable data collected by means of questionnaires, all accessible in the appendix of the book. It represents the first systematic attempt towards a unified typology of coordination relations. © 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. All rights reserved.
This paper treats bridging constructions in the Tsezic languages (Bezhta, Hunzib, Khwarshi, Hinuq, and Tsez) of the Nakh-Daghestanian language family. We describe the syntactic and semantic properties of bridging constructions based on corpus data from all five Tsezic languages. Bridging constructions are defined as bipartite constructions that consist of a finite reference clause, which is followed by a non-main adverbial clause that functions as the bridging clause. The adverbial clause contains a variety of temporal converbs with general perfective converbs being more common than other types of temporal converbs. Reference and bridging clauses are both a target for additions, omissions, modifications and substitutions.
Bridging constructions are primarily found in traditional oral narratives such as fairy tales where they index the genre and function as stylistic devices to express parallelism. Within the narratives they are often used to indicate episode changes and can be accompanied by switches of subject referents or locations.
Introduction Many languages have mechanisms whereby one clause can be said to modify another in a way similar to the way in which an adverb modifies a proposition. Just as with adverbs, which are single words or phrases, adverbial clauses can be labelled and categorized with respect to the semantic roles they play. For example, in the English sentences in (1), the italicized expressions can all be called 'time adverbials': that in (1a) is a 'time adverb'; those in (1b) and (1c) are 'time adverbial phrases'; while in (1d) we have a 'time adverbial clause': (1) a. She mailed it yesterday b. He eats lunch at 11.45c. She has chemistry lab in the morning d. I get up when the sun rises In Part I of this chapter we examine the various structural types of adverbial clauses found in languages of the world, while in Part II we treat the adverbial clause from its discourse perspective. The remainder of Part I is organized as follows: section 1 characterizes the notion 'adverbial subordinate clauses', while section 2 examines the adverbial subordinate clause types which languages typically manifest. In section 3 we describe 'speech act' adverbial clauses, and in section 4 we raise the issue of subordinators being borrowed from one language into another. Section 5 summarizes the findings of Part I. 1 Characterization of adverbial clauses The relationship between 'subordinate' and 'main' (coordinate) clauses is clearly a continuum. © Cambridge University Press 2007 and Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Tail-head linkage is a discourse pattern which consists in repeating, at the beginning of a new sentence, the main verb of the preceding sentence for discourse cohesion. This pattern, which is rarely discussed in general typological work, is widespread in certain areas of the globe, in particular Papua New Guinea. In this paper, I report a case of tail-head linkage in Cavineña, an Amazonian language spoken in the northern lowlands of Bolivia, in which it is manifested by way of three subordinate clause types: two temporal adverbial clauses and a relative clause used adverbially. I also show how the switch-reference system that is associated with certain of these clauses participates in the tail-head linkage system for participant coherence between sentences.
This article presents a typological characterization of a class of demonstratives so far neglected in the literature: demonstrative verbs expressing manner. First, the morphological characteristics and syntactic behaviors of these demonstratives are examined to illustrate their verbal properties and to justify categorizing them as verbs. Next, their exophoric and endophoric roles in narratives and interactions are described. As their discourse usages closely replicate that of nominal demonstratives, we argue that demonstrative verbs belong to the class of demonstratives and propose to integrate them in a general typology of demonstratives.
Traditionally the study of syntax is restricted to the study of what goes on within the boundaries of the prosodic sentence. Although the nature of clause combining within a prosodic sentence has always been a central concern of traditional syntax (in GG, e.g. it underlies important research on deletion and anaphora), work within a discourse analysis framework has hardly been done. Analyses like this are given in the present volume.
A number of features found in spoken narratives in the Rembarrnga language of Arnhem Land can be seen to serve a cohesive function within the text. These include not only ellipsis of pronominal prefixes and tense marking from the verb complex but also the repetition of fully inflected verbs in subsequent sentences in order to background completion of one activity/event in the process of moving on to the next. Repetition of sentence elements in differing order allows focus to come upon different elements in turn. Incorporation of the noun into the verb complex allows cohesive backgrounding of a nominal element following its initial introduction to the text. A number of text examples of such apparently cohesive features are explored.
In this discussion note, I argue that we need to distinguish carefully between descriptive categories, that is, categories of particular languages, and comparative concepts, which are used for crosslinguistic comparison and are specifically created by typologists for the purposes of comparison. Descriptive formal categories cannot be equated across languages because the criteria for category assignment are different from language to language. This old structuralist insight (called categorial particularism) has recently been emphasized again by several linguists, but the idea that linguists need to identify ‘crosslinguistic categories’ before they can compare languages is still widespread, especially (but not only) in generative linguistics. Instead, what we have to do (and normally do in practice) is to create comparative concepts that allow us to identify comparable phenomena across languages and to formulate crosslinguistic generalizations. Comparative concepts have to be universally applicable, so they can only be based on other universally applicable concepts: conceptual-semantic concepts, general formal concepts, and other comparative concepts. Comparative concepts are not always purely semantically based concepts, but outside of phonology they usually contain a semantic component. The fact that typologists compare languages in terms of a separate set of concepts that is not taxonomically superordinate to descriptive linguistic categories means that typology and language-particular analysis are more independent of each other than is often thought.*
Languages can be similar in many ways - they can resemble each other in categories, constructions and meanings, and in the actual forms used to express these. A shared feature may be based on common genetic origin, or result from geographic proximity and borrowing. Some aspects of grammar are spread more readily than others. The question is - which are they? When languages are in contact with each other, what changes do we expect to occur in their grammatical structures? Only an inductively based cross-linguistic examination can provide an answer. This is what this volume is about. The book starts with a typological introduction outlining principles of contact-induced change and factors which facilitate diffusion of linguistic traits. It is followed by twelve studies of contact-induced changes in languages from Amazonia, East and West Africa, Australia, East Timor, and the Sinitic domain. Set alongside these are studies of Pennsylvania German spoken by Mennonites in Canada in contact with English, Basque in contact with Romance languages in Spain and France, and language contact in the Balkans. All the studies are based on intensive fieldwork, and each cast in terms of the typological parameters set out in the introduction. The book includes a glossary to facilitate its use by graduates and advanced undergraduates in linguistics and in disciplines such as anthropology.
Languages can be similar in many ways - they can resemble each other in categories, constructions and meanings, and in the actual forms used to express these. A shared feature may be based on common genetic origin, or result from geographic proximity and borrowing. Some aspects of grammar are spread more readily than others. The question is - which are they? When languages are in contact with each other, what changes do we expect to occur in their grammatical structures? Only an inductively based cross-linguistic examination can provide an answer. This is what this volume is about. The book starts with a typological introduction outlining principles of contact-induced change and factors which facilitate diffusion of linguistic traits. It is followed by twelve studies of contact-induced changes in languages from Amazonia, East and West Africa, Australia, East Timor, and the Sinitic domain. Set alongside these are studies of Pennsylvania German spoken by Mennonites in Canada in contact with English, Basque in contact with Romance languages in Spain and France, and language contact in the Balkans. All the studies are based on intensive fieldwork, and each cast in terms of the typological parameters set out in the introduction. The book includes a glossary to facilitate its use by graduates and advanced undergraduates in linguistics and in disciplines such as anthropology.
Switch reference is a grammatical process that marks a referential relationship between arguments of two (or more) verbs. Typically it has been characterized as an inflection pattern on the verb itself, encoding identity or non-identity between subject arguments separately from traditional person or number marking. In the 50 years since William Jacobsen’s coinage of the term, switch reference has evolved from an exotic phenomenon found in a handful of lesser-known languages to a widespread feature found in geographically and linguistically unconnected parts of the world. The growing body of information on the topic raises new theoretical and empirical questions about the development, functions, and nature of switch reference, as well as the internal variation between different switch-reference systems. The contributions to this volume discuss these and other questions for a wide variety of languages from all over the world, and endevaour to demonstrate the full functional and morphosyntactic range of the phenomenon.
In central cases of switch-reference, a marker on the verb of one clause is used to indicate whether its subject has the same or different reference from the subject of an adjacent, syntactically related clause. In central cases of logophoricity, a special pronoun form is used within a reported speech context, to indicate coherence with the source of reported speech. Lesley Stirling argues that these types of anaphoric linkage across clause boundaries cannot be adequately accounted for by Binding Theory. Her detailed examination of the two phenomena, including a case study of the Papuan language Amele, proposes an account for them which is formalized in Discourse Representation Theory, and explores how far it is possible for such an account to be compositional morpho-syntactic/semantic, while at the same time taking seriously the range of linguistic and cross-linguistic data to be explained. Switch-reference's indication of agreement or disagreement between clauses (or larger discourse units) is shown to function along various parameters contributing to discourse continuity: their major protagonists, spatial and temporal location, and their status as describing actual or non-actual situations. The arguments bear also on general debates around the nature of linguistically marked referential relations and the analysis of logophoric phenomena.
Switch reference is a grammatical process that marks a referential relationship between arguments of two (or more) verbs. Typically it has been characterized as an inflection pattern on the verb itself, encoding identity or non-identity between subject arguments separately from traditional person or number marking. In the 50 years since William Jacobsen’s coinage of the term, switch reference has evolved from an exotic phenomenon found in a handful of lesser-known languages to a widespread feature found in geographically and linguistically unconnected parts of the world. The growing body of information on the topic raises new theoretical and empirical questions about the development, functions, and nature of switch reference, as well as the internal variation between different switch-reference systems. The contributions to this volume discuss these and other questions for a wide variety of languages from all over the world, and endevaour to demonstrate the full functional and morphosyntactic range of the phenomenon.
The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. © Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30. All rights reserved.
This book is a detailed high-quality descriptive grammar of the endangered Cavineña language (less than 1200 speakers), spoken in the Amazonian rainforest of Lowland Bolivia, an area where the indigenous languages are virtually unknown. Cavineña belongs to the Tacanan family, comprising five languages, none of which has been the subject of an adequate descriptive grammar. The grammar is based mostly on the extensive fieldwork conducted by the author in traditional Cavineña communities. Cast in the functional-typological framework, and based on natural discourse data, the grammar presents a detailed and copiously exemplified account of most aspects of the language, building up from basic levels (phonetic and phonological) to higher levels (morphological and syntactic), and from brief descriptions of each level to a more comprehensive description of the same level in specific chapters. The language contains a number of unusual features that will be of interest to typologist linguists, such as an unusual pitch accent system, a morpho-phonological rule that deletes case markers, an intricate predicate structure, a system of verbal suffixes coding associated motion, a specific causative of involvement marker, a peculiar prefix e- that attaches to nouns coding body parts and a complex system of second position clitic pronouns. The grammar will also be of interest to historical-comparative linguists, as for the first time one has sufficiently detailed grammatical information to make possible a reliable comparison with other languages with which Tacanan languages might be related, in particular the Panoan family, and to serve as input into hypotheses regarding the population history of this part of South America. © 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved.
Teiwa is a non-Austronesian ('Papuan') language spoken on the island of Pantar, in eastern Indonesia, located just north of Timor island. It has approx. 4,000 speakers and is highly endangered. While the non-Austronesian languages of the Alor-Pantar archipelago are clearly related to each other, as indicated by the many apparent cognates and the very similar pronominal paradigms found across the group, their genetic relationship to other Papuan languages remains controversial. Located some 1,000 km from their putative Papuan neighbors on the New Guinea mainland, the Alor-Pantar languages are the most distant westerly Papuan outliers. A grammar of Teiwa presents a grammatical description of one of these 'outlier' languages. The book is structured as a reference grammar: after a general introduction on the language, it speakers and the linguistic situation on Alor and Pantar, the grammar builds up from a description of the language's phonology and word classes to its larger grammatical constituents and their mutual relations: nominal phrases, serial verb constructions, clauses, clause combinations, and information structure. While many Papuan languages are morphologically complex, Teiwa is almost analytic: it has only one paradigm of object marking prefixes, and one verbal suffix marking realis status. Other typologically interesting features of the language include: (i) the presence of uvular fricatives and stops, which is atypical for languages of eastern Indonesia; (ii) the absence of trivalent verbs: transitive verbs select a single (animate or inanimate) object, while the additional participant is expressed with a separate predicate; and (iii) the absence of morpho-syntactically encoded embedded clauses. A grammar of Teiwa is based on primary field data, collected by the author in 2003-2007. A selection of glossed and translated Teiwa texts of various genres and word lists (Teiwa-English / English-Teiwa) are included.
This article gives a first account of the background marker ná in Barayin, an East Chadic language spoken in the Guera region of Chad. The article describes the marker's syntactic distribution and the semantic and pragmatic contexts it occurs in. It commonly occurs following a sentence-initial noun phrase or adverbial, and it also commonly follows a sentence-initial dependent clause such as a conditional clause. The material preceding ná is background information which provides a context for the interpretation of the following proposition, which is the main point of the communication.
A common cross-linguistic grammatical process involves repetition. This generally operates at the morphological level, as reduplication, and can carry any of a variety of meanings. In Jarawara repetition operates at the syntactic level. After a fully articulated main clause, can be added a truncated version of it (including just the core components). This has purely semantic effect, indicating that the activity referred to is extended in time. The “summarizing clause” in Jarawara looks a little like “bridging constructions” (also known as “head-tail” or “tail-head” linkage), but it is functionally quite different, playing no role in establishing discourse continuity. © 2017, Indiana University Anthropological Linguistics. All rights reserved.
Variety sampling aims at capturing as much of the world’s linguistic variety as possible. The article discusses and compares two sampling methods designed for variety sampling: the Diversity Value method, in which sample languages are picked according to the diversity found in family trees, and the Genus-Macroarea method, in which genealogical stratification is primarily based on genera and areal stratification pays attention to the proportional representation of the genealogical diversity of macroareas. The pros and cons of the methods are discussed, some additional features are introduced to the Genus-Macroarea method, and the ability of both methods to capture crosslinguistic variety is tested with computerized simulations drawing on data in
The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. © 2001 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved.
This paper introduces a new survey of switch-reference in the languages of North America. The survey's purposes are to provide a broad basis for future analysis of switchreference (SR), spur further research on the languages included, and help revitalization efforts with a better understanding of what SR looks like and how it works. The survey catalogs 33 facts about SR morphology, semantics, and syntax, organized around central questions in SR research. The paper discusses the major findings based on the survey, some of which have major implications for theories of switch-reference: SR is found in nearly 70 American language varieties, mostly in the western United States and Mexico, often spreading by areal diffusion. Cross-linguistically, SR usually indicates subject co-reference across clauses. It is associated with every type of clause juncture except disjunction and is found throughout the verbal morphology. Morphological homophony with case is not due to a common semantic core.
While the notion of the ‘area’ or ‘Sprachbund’ has a long history in linguistics, with geographically-defined regions frequently cited as a useful means to explain typological distributions, the problem of delimiting areas has not been well addressed. Lists of general-purpose, largely independent ‘macro-areas’ (typically continent size) have been proposed as a step to rule out contact as an explanation for various large-scale linguistic phenomena. This squib points out some problems in some of the currently widely-used predetermined areas, those found in the World Atlas of Language Structures (Haspelmath et al., 2005). Instead, we propose a principled division of the world’s landmasses into six macro-areas that arguably have better geographical independence properties.
Members of a functional category that I tentatively call "utterance modifiers" are the most vulnerable items to contact-related linguistic change in grammar. Utterance modifiers regulate linguistic-mental processing activities that can be attributed to a "grammar of directing." Bilinguals, when faced with the tension of choosing among the systems at their disposal in what is a highly automaticized operation, are tempted to reduce the overt representation of the "grammar of directing" to just one set of elements. Preference is given to the pragmatically dominant language. Contact-related change in the area of utterance modifiers is therefore not due to lack of equivalent functions in the indigenous language, nor is it due to the prestige effect that the integration of L2 items may have on the overall flavor of the discourse. Rather, I attribute synchronic variation in the speech of bilinguals to the cognitive pressure exerted on them to draw on the resources of the pragmatically dominant language for situative, gesturelike discourse-regulating purposes, and the diachronic change that arises from such variation to the establishment of a permanent licensing for speakers to do so.
Lavukaleve is a Papuan Language spoken on the Russell Islands in the Central Province of the Solomon Islands. The phonology and morpho-phonology of Lavukaleve are described, as well as arguments adjuncts, the Lavukaleve predicate structure (including predicate types and core participant marking, the agreement suffix, focus constructions, tense, aspect and mood, word-level derivation, complex predicates), interclausal syntax, and the Lavukaleve discourse organisation. The book includes a list of affixes, a list of lexemes, and an appendix with Lavukaleve texts. The data used in this work was collected by the author during five field trips.
In this article a typological overview of tail-head linkage (THL) in Papuan languages is presented. There are two types of THL, chained THL and thematized THL. The chained type is the default type and its morphosyntactic form follows from the basic clause linkage type in a given Papuan language, for example when switch reference constructions are the basic type of clause linkage, then the default type of THL takes the form of switch reference constructions. Chained THL carries referential coherence mechanisms (e.g. gender agreements, switch reference) and event sequencing mechanisms (e.g. sequence-simultaneity morphology) across chain boundaries. The second, marked, type of THL is with nominalized clauses that discontinue the event and participant lines. The head clause in this type of THL is a thematic NP that is syntactically separate from the chain and this reflects thematic discontinuity: the thematic head clause is off-sequence. In languages like Wambon and Usan the two types of THL select different verb types: medial verbs that express switch reference (same versus different subject) and/or sequence-simultaneity distinctions occur in the chained type and independent verbs that cannot express these distinctions occur in the second, thematic type. THL has four functions, referential coherence, processing ease, thematic continuity (chained type) and thematic discontinuity (thematized type). The phonological form of THL (slowly pronounced, rising intonation, pause phenomena) reflects its processing function to give speakers and addressees a break between two chains.
The notion of redundancy has been referred to in several different research domains, from the classic mathematical theory of communication to biology, to linguistics, etc. In a pragmatic perspective, which takes the multimodality of communication into account and focuses on several kinds of contextual and social components, the goal of interaction, as is underlined in the Gricean Cooperative Principle, together with other parameters (such as interactional, social, and psychological aspects, corresponding to different cognitive/pragmatic functions), become crucial.In discourse, and especially in face-to-face interaction, redundancy can have different linguistic forms, and perform various cognitive/pragmatic functions. To analyze some of these aspects, two convergent phenomena, repetition and intensity, will be discussed, and lastly correlated to the complexity of language.Research highlights► An overview of redundancy across disciplines is provided at the beginning. ► In discourse, redundancy can have different linguistic forms, and perform various functions. ► Textual, contextual, interactional, social, and psychological parameters should be considered. ► Some aspects of redundancy, related to repetition and intensity are discussed and exemplified. ► Redundancy as a piece of the complex machinery of language as an interacting system.
Key Words Amazonia, language change, linguistic area, discourse area, ethnography of speaking ■ Abstract In indigenous lowland South America there are several discourse forms and processes that are shared by groups of people of distinct genetic linguistic affili-ations; this leads us to posit this large region, which we label greater Amazonia, as a discourse area, a concept that parallels the notion of linguistic area. The discourse forms and processes we examine are ceremonial dialogue, dialogical performance, templatic ratifying, echo speech, ceremonial greeting, ritual wailing, evidentiality, speech report-ing practices, parallelism, special languages, and shamanistic language use. We hypoth-esize that in lowland South America, discourse is the matrix for linguistic diffusion, i.e., that linguistic areas emerge within discourse areas. What we propose then is a discourse-centered approach to language change and history, parallel to a discourse-centered ap-proach to language structure and use. Our survey includes a plea for a careful archiving of recorded and written materials dealing with lowland South American discourse.
Cofan paragraph structure and function
- Borman
La pelea a cuchillo: La pelea de San Antonio (discurso exhortativo: Textos del coreguaje)
- Cook
Páez discourse, paragraph and sentence structure
- Gerdel
Bridging constructions in typological perspective
- Guérin
Tail-head linkage in Siroi
- van Kleef
Notes on switch-reference in Creek
- Martin