Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 31:4 (2021) ► pp.533–559

Salience and shift in salience as means of creating discourse coherence

The case of the Chipaya enclitics

ORCID logo | Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich | University of Cologne

The Chipaya language, an endangered isolate of the Bolivian highlands, has a set of three enclitics, =l, =m and =ʐ, which are coreferential with the subject of a clause but are not necessarily attached to it and are not obligatory. In this paper, I investigate the pragmatic function of these forms. The salience-marking enclitics (henceforth SMEs) occur at paratactic and hypotactic discourse transitions, where they indicate a shift in salience, thereby contributing to creating discourse coherence. Discourse transitions without a shift in salience are not accompanied by the enclitics. Those enclitics that occur at paratactic transitions have scope over at least the segment whose beginning and/or end they occur in, whereas SMEs at hypotactic transitions have scope over the clause they appear in. Use of the SMEs is genre-specific.

Keywords: salience, shift in salience, discourse transitions, discourse coherence, enclitics, Chipaya, Bolivia
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Salience, the Chipaya SMEs and further discourse-structuring devices of Chipaya
    • 2.2Discourse coherence and discourse transitions
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Quantitative analysis
  • 5.Case studies
    • 5.1A folk story: The fox and the armadillo (DAT 26–1)
    • 5.2A descriptive text: Animales ‘animals’
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 17 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20010.han
References
Adelaar, Willem
2007 “Threatened Languages in Hispanic South America.” In Language Diversity Endangered, ed. by Matthias Brenzinger, 9–28. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Adelaar, Willem, and Pieter Muysken
2004 The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
2002 “Typological Parameters for the Study of Clitics, with Special Reference to Tariana.” In Word: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, ed. by Robert M. W. Dixon, and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, 42–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira
1990 Accessing Noun Phrase Antecedents. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo
2006 El chipaya o la lengua de los hombres del agua [Chipaya or the Language of the People of the Water]. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.Google Scholar
2009 “Chipaya.” In Lenguas de Bolivia [Languages of Bolivia]. Volume I1: Ámbito andino [Andean Sphere], ed. by Mily Crevels, and Pieter Muysken, 29–77. La Paz: Plural Editores.Google Scholar
Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo, and Enrique Ballón Aguirre
2011 Chipaya: Léxico-etnotaxonomía [Chipaya: Lexical Ethnotaxonomy]. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen: Centre for Language Studies.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace
1980 “The Deployment of Consciousness in the Production of a Narrative.” In The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production, ed. by Wallace Chafe, 9–50. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Chiarcos, Christian
2011 “The Mental Salience Framework: Context-Adequate Generation of Referring Expressions.” In Salience: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Its Function in Discourse, ed. by Michael Grabski, Claus Berry, and Christian Chiarcos, 105–139. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coulmas, Florian
(ed.) 1986 Direct and Indirect Speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen (DobeS)
[Documentation of Endangered Languages]. [URL] (8 April 2021).
Gardner-Chloros, Penelope
2009 Code-Switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gerlach, Birgit, and Janet Grijzenhout
2000 “Clitics from Different Perspectives.” In Clitics in Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, ed. by Birgit Gerlach, and Janet Grijzenhout, 1–29. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Grimes, Joseph E.
1975 The Thread of Discourse. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J.
1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hannß, Katja
2008 Uchumataqu. The Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia. A Grammatical Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and 1952. Leiden: CNWS.Google Scholar
accepted. “The Expression of Directed Caused Accompanied Motion (CAM) Events in Chipaya.” In Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and Taking Events in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective ed. by Birgit Hellwig, Anna Margetts, and Sonja Riesberg Amsterdam John Benjamins
Holt, Elizabeth
1996 “Reporting on Talk: The Use of Direct Reported Speech in Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 291: 219–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howard-Malverde, Rosaleen
1990 “Introduction.” In Liliane Porterie-Gutiérrez (author), “Documentos para el estudio de la lengua chipaya [Documents for the Study of the Chipaya Language].” Amerindia 151: 157–191. [URL] (27 December 2019).
Longacre, Robert E.
1996 The Grammar of Discourse. Second edition. New York/London: Plenum Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers Scotton, Carol
1983 “The Negotiation of Identities in Conversation: A Theory of Markedness and Code Choice.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 441: 115–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olawsky, Knut J.
2006 A Grammar of Urarina. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olson, Ronald D.
1967 “The Syllable in Chipaya.” International Journal of American Linguistics 331: 300–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Porterie-Gutiérrez, Liliane
1990 “Documentos para el estudio de la lengua chipaya [Documents for the Study of the Chipaya Language].” Amerindia 151: 157–191. [URL] (27 December 2019).
Redeker, Gisela
2006 “Discourse Markers as Attentional Cues at Discourse Transitions.” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 339–358. Oxford/Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Redeker, Gisela, and Helmut Gruber
2014 “Introduction: The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence.” In The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence, ed. by Helmut Gruber, and Gisela Redeker, 1–22. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah
1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna
2004 Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
The Language Archive (TLA)
. [URL] (27 December 2019).
Uhle, Max
1894 Uro Grammar I and II. Manuscript in the possession of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin. [URL] (27 December 2019).
Zwicky, Arnold
1977 On Clitics. Bloomington: Ohio State University [Reproduced by the Indiana University Linguistics Club]. [URL] (27 December 2019).