The discourse marker ale in Bislama oral narratives
This study takes us to the South Pacific and concentrates on Bislama, one of the dialects of Melanesian pidgin
(
Siegel 2008: 4) and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. We take a discourse
analysis perspective to map out the functions of
ale, a conspicuous discourse marker in conversations and
narratives. Using
Labov & Waletzky (1967) model, we analyze the use of
ale in narratives from the book
Big Wok: Storian blong Wol Wo Tu long Vanuatu (
Lindstrom & Gwero 1998) and determine that
ale is a discourse marker
which indicates temporal sequence and consequence, frames speech reports and closes a digression. We conclude our study by
considering a possible historical development of
ale. We map out how French
allez could have
become Bislama
ale using imposition and functional transfer (
Siegel
2008;
Winford 2013a) of vernacular discourse markers (such as
go in Nguna).
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Discourse markers: A roadmap
- 2.Data and methods
- 2.1The corpus, the cohort
- 2.2The method
- 2.3Bislama in a nutshell
- 3.
Ale in spoken Bislama
- 3.1Prosodic properties of ale
- 3.2Functions of the connective ale
- 3.3More than a simple connective
- 3.3.1Framing ale
- 3.3.2Resumptive ale
- 3.4Interim summary
- 4.
Allez! and Ale
- 4.1
Allez!
- 4.2
Ale as ‘encouragement to act’
- 4.3From allez to ale
- 4.4Imposition
- 5.Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
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