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Beyond Aspect: The expression of discourse functions in African languages
Edited by Doris L. Payne and Shahar Shirtz
[Typological Studies in Language 109] 2015
► pp. 53–80

Main event line structure and aspect in Sandawe narratives

| SIL International

Sandawe (isolate, Tanzania) does not have a specific verb form which fulfils the function of advancing the main event line in a narrative, nor does it have a set of dedicated aspect morphemes. Despite this, the language makes use of aspect distinctions in structuring the main event line, both by signalling whether information should be interpreted as part of the main event line and by providing a temporal organisation of this information. With respect to this latter function, the distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, which is achieved by various grammatical and lexical means, is utilised to indicate whether events are to be understood as chronologically sequential, simultaneous or overlapping.

Published online: 2 December 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.109.03eat
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