Narrative functions of clause linkage in Garrwa

Clause linkage has long been associated with the cohesive narrative functions of temporal organisation and participant tracking (eg. Givon 1983a, Myhill & Hibiya 1988). In this paper I use data from Garrwa, a language of Northern Australia, to show that in addition to these functions, clause linkage also contributes to the interpretation of narrative perspective. The results of this investigation illustrate the range of functions that can be associated with clause linkage, contributing to the analysis of clause linkage cross-linguistically, as well as demonstrating the utility of narrative perspective as a discourse-pragmatic phenomenon motivating choices in linguistic form, and coherence in narrative structure.

Published online: 11 March 2005
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.29.1.02mus