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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. 117–144

Aspect-Mood and discourse in Kabyle (Berber) spoken narratives

| Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and CNRS-LLACAN

The choice among aspectual forms in Kabyle (Berber) discourse that advance the storyline is a matter of stance and genre. Kabyle has at least five aspect-mood forms. Close examination of a folktale shows that Perfective is the main form in narrative sequences that relate events belonging to the skeletal structure of the discourse. In a personal recount contrasting the past and present condition of women, the preverbed Aorist is instead used in the foreground. In both genres, Perfectives are not in themselves foregrounding forms. Storyline advancement results from the co-occurrence of several features: perfectivity, sequenciality of dynamic verbs, word order, and the presence of a proximal clitic on the verbal form. By contrast, Imperfectives are backgrounding forms.

Published online: 2 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.109.05met
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Cited by 3 other publications

Mettouchi, Amina
2021. From a corpus-based to a corpus-driven definition of clefts in Kabyle (Berber): Morphosyntax and prosody. Faits de Langues 52:1 ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
Mettouchi, Amina & Valentina Schiattarella
2018. Chapter 10. The influence of the state distinction on word order and information structure in Kabyle and Siwi (Berber). In Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages [Studies in Language Companion Series, 199], ► pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Shirtz, Shahar
2024. Discourse markers as the locus of signaling the main-event line in Alsea narratives. Linguistics 62:1 ► pp. 229 ff. DOI logo

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