Aspect and discourse in African languages

Tue Oct 16 00:42:23 UTC 2012

--- apologies for cross posting ---

Dear all,

We would like to propose a workshop on “Aspect and Discourse in African
Languages” for the 46th SLE (Societas Linguistica Europaea) Meeting, to be
held September 18-21, 2013, in Split, Croatia. 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
workshop proposal plus short (300-word) abstracts is November 15, 2012.

We invite you to submit an abstract for this workshop by *November 7, 2012*,
sent as both PDF and either Word or Open Office documents, to *
shahars at uoregon.edu* <shahars at uoregon.edu>. Please state “SLE 2013” in the
subject line.

Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested. Thank you for
your collaboration!

Proposed SLE 2013 Workshop onː

*Aspect and Discourse in African Languages*

Workshop Organizers: Shahar Shirtz (shahars at uoregon.edu), Doris Payne (
dlpayne at uoregon.edu), and Lutz Marten (lm5 at soas.ac.uk)

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. *Te**nse 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 **g
rammar.* 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.
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