C W McClelland Phd

Stories, Grammar and Prosody in a Berber Language C W McClelland Phd

The interconnections that exist among prosody, clause structure, and discourse pragmatics have been noted by many linguists (e.g., Halliday 1967; Givón 1983; Longacre 1983). These interconnections have included such phenomena as pausing after a paragraph or episode, and other interconnections have concerned characteristics of certain types of discourse such as narrative in which the use of intonation indicates topic and/or focus. Still others pertain to changes in clause structure which characterize certain sections of a discourse, such as peak, where clauses may display unusual word ordering, inflection, and unique intonation (Longacre 1983). However, few of these interconnections have been studied quantitatively and systematically, and there is no model of integration. The problem is that spoken discourse is complex, so much so that it has been hard to find a systematic method to 'capture' it in its entirety. In the past, the task of analyzing the interrelationships among the domains of grammar, prosody, and discourse would have been far too difficult, but thanks to recent advances in computer technology and computer-assisted analysis, we can now begin to approach the problem. This study is a systematic investigation of the links among prosody, clause structure, and discourse pragmatics in four oral narratives of Tarifit, a Berber language spoken in northeastern Morocco.