Extension of date: Aspect and Discourse in African Languages, SLE 2013

Tue Nov 6 01:26:30 UTC 2012

Dear Colleagues:

We invite you to submit an abstract for a workshop on "Aspect and 
Discourse in African Languages" (see description below), for the 46th 
SLE (Societas Linguistica Europaea) 2013 conference, to be held 
September 18-21, 2013, in Split, Croatia. We are extending the date for 
initial (300-word) abstracts to November 10.

Please send your 300-word abstract as both PDF and either Word or Open 
Office documents, to shahars at uoregon.edu. Please state “SLE 2013” in the 
subject line.

Workshops at the SLE are usually composed of from 8 to 13 papers, 
selected by the workshop organizers, and by the SLE organizing 
committee. The deadline for the full workshop proposal plus short 
(300-word) abstracts is November 15, 2012.

Thank you for your collaboration! Please forward this to anyone you 
think may be interested. Also feel free to discuss your ideas with us, 
if you are uncertain about scope.

Workshop Organizers: Shahar Shirtz (shahars at uoregon.edu), Doris Payne 
(dlpayne at uoregon.edu), Lutz Marten (lm5 at soas.ac.uk), and Stephane Robert 
(robert at vjf.cnrs.fr).

________________

Proposed SLE 2013 Workshop onː

Aspect and Discourse in African Languages

The correlation between discourse / narrative function and aspect has 
been noted in many studies (e.g., Fleischmann 1990 for Romance, Sawicki 
2008 for Polish). Roughly, a correlation is found between perfective 
forms and main story line (or foreground) clauses and imperfective forms 
and non-main story line or background clauses (Labov & Waletzky 1967, 
Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994, inter alia).

In many African languages one finds constructions (either clausal 
constructions or specialized verb forms) which are used primarily (but 
almost never solely) to convey events on the main narrative / plot line. 
Such constructions are found in West African languages (Robert 1991, 
2012, Carlson 1992), Nilotic (Tucker & Mpaayei 1955, Dimmendaal 1983, 
König 1993) Afro-Asiatic (e.g., Jaggar 2006) and Bantu (Doke 1954, 
Hopper 1979, Nurse 2008) among other phyla and groups of African 
languages. Such constructions differ in the degree to which they are 
“dedicated” to narrative usage and the other usages they are found in, 
the morphosyntax of the constructions, their pragmatic implications, 
their diachronic sources and many other parameters. They may also vary 
in the degree in which the “narrative” form is an aspect or even TAM 
form.

Thus, the typological and genealogical variety of African languages, 
together with the frequency of so called “narrative” forms, raise ample 
questions and problems of analysis and description. In turn, these forms 
provide opportunities for many lines of research including the diachrony 
of these forms or their grammaticalization pathways (e.g., Bybee, 
Perkins & Pagliuca 1994), the functional range of these forms in 
different discourse types (e.g., Robert 2012) their morpho-syntactic and 
functional typology, and the potential genesis of aspect categories 
under discourse pressures, among many others.

This workshop is aimed at bringing together scholars interested in the 
different linguistic phyla and areas of Africa in order to address 
questions of aspect and discourse and narrative usage. The topics and 
questions we wish to address include, but are by no means limited to, 
the following:

1.    Many African languages have been claimed to have specialized 
“narrative” constructions. However these constructions may also be used 
in non-narrative texts or in non-plot / non-main event line contexts. 
What is the functional range or distribution of these so called 
“narrative” forms?

2.      What is the relation between aspect and “narrative” forms? Are 
“narrative” forms always perfective? If no, are there other signals of 
perfectivity in the clausal construction for?

3.     Do forms used to advance the main even line carry special 
implicatures? Do they carry an implicature of a finished event? An 
implicature that the preceding event has finished? Is there an 
implication / implicature of telicity in “narrative” forms

4.      What are the attested diachronic sources and pathways of the so 
called “narrative forms”?

5.    What types of changes in Tense Aspect Mood (TAM) marking are 
found when shifting between main plot line to other discourse modes 
(e.g., description, explanation)? Or when shifting from one episode to 
another (i.e., from one narrative sequence to another)?

6.     How clear is the relation between imperfectivity and background 
/ non main event line clauses? What types of imperfectivity are found in 
such clauses? Do certain functions attract certain types of 
imperfectivity?

7.      Perfectivity is seldom divided into subtypes (Comrie 1976). Can 
one, given the central role of perfectivity in discourse (Fleischmann 
1990), identify distinct semantic (sub-)types of the perfective in 
African languages?

8.     Some African languages have subtypes of perfects, or of 
“anteriors” (cf. Drolc 1992, 2000). Via what different diachronic paths 
might these have arisen? What roles do they play in discourse; e.g., is 
there a relation between perfect and background / non main event line 
clauses? Do certain discourse functions attract certain types of perfect 
(cf. Comrie 1976:56-65)?

9.      Besides perfects or anteriors (Nurse 2008), are there other 
aspects or aspect-like categories or constructions which refer to two 
time points, e.g. situative (‘while’), persistive (‘still’), alterative 
(‘now but not before’)? How are these used in narrative discourse?

10.  Contrastive focus and information focus constructions are thought 
of as incompatible with main event line function(s) (but see Jagger 
2006). Is there a relation between contrastive / information focus 
constructions and particular aspects?

REFERENCES

Bybee, J., R. Perkins, & W. Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar: 
tense, aspect and      modality in the languages of the world. Chicago 
and London: University of Chicago Press.

Carlson, Robert. 1992. Narrative, subjunctive and finiteness. Journal 
ofAfrican Languages and Linguistics. 13: 59-85

Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. Cambridgeː Cambridge University Press.

Doke, C.M. 1954. The Southern Bantu languages. Oxford: Oxford 
University Press.

Drolc, U. 1992. On the perfect in Swahili. Afrikanistische 
Arbeitspapiere 29: 63-87.

Drolc, U. 2000. Zur Typologie des Perfekts (am Beispiel des Swahili). 
W. Breu (ed.), Probleme der interaktion von Lexik und Aspekt (ILA). 
91-112. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Fleischmann, S. 1990. Tense and narrativityː From medieval performance 
to modern fiction. Austinː University of Texas Press.

Hopper, P. 1979. Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. T. Givón (ed.), 
Syntax and Semantics, 12ː Discourse and Syntax. 213-241. New York, 
Academic Press.

Jaggar, P.H, 2006, The Hausa perfective tense-aspect used in WH-/Focus 
constructions and historical narratives: A unified account. In: Hyman, 
Larry M. and Newman, Paul, (eds.), West African Linguistics: 
Descriptive, Comparative, and Historical Studies in Honor of Russell G. 
Schuh. 100-133. Studies in African Linguistics.

König, C. 1993. Aspekt im Maa. Köln: Institüt für Afrikanistik, 
Universitat zu Köln.

Labov, W. & J. Waletzky. 1967. Narrative analysisː oral versions of 
personal experience. J. Helm (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual 
arts, 12-42. (Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the 
American Ethnological Society.) Seattleː University of Washington Press.

Newman, P. 2000. The Hausa language: An encyclopedic reference grammar. 
New-Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Nurse, D. 2008. Tense and aspect in Bantu. Oxfordː Oxford University 
Press.

Robert, S. 1991. Approche énonciative du système verbalː le cas du 
Wolof. Parisː Éditions du CNRS.

Robert, S. 2012. From temporal vagueness to syntactic and pragmatic 
dependencyː the case of null tense (or aorist). Paper presented at the 
SLE 45th  meeting, Stockholm.

Sawicki, L. 2008. Towards a narrative grammar of Polish. Warsaw: Warsaw 
University Press.

Tucker, A. N. & J. Ole-Mpaayei. 1955. Maasai grammar, with vocabulary. 
Londonː Longman, Green & Co.

-- 
_____________________
Doris L. Payne
Professor of Linguistics
& Associate Head of Linguistics for AEI matters
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
541-346-3894