Information Management in Isaan Storytelling
Loading...
Date
2024-01-09
Authors
Raksachat, Milntra
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This study is an investigation of information packaging or information structure properties associated with selected productive morphosyntactic constructions in Isaan narrative texts. The description and analysis of grammatical constructions draws from the Spoken Isaan Corpus. Information packaging properties associated with Isaan constructions are examined primarily from within the Construction Grammar framework, supplemented by collexeme analyses. The study assumes that a speaker’s assessment of the listeners’ states of mind guides the linguistic choices that they make in terms of referring expressions, single vs. serial verb clauses, and other morphosyntactic structures. Some constructions and contexts require ka immediately after the subject of a construction (if overt) and before the predicate; but in other instances, ka is structurally optional. Special attention is given to the speakers’ choice in using or not using the morpheme ka when it is structurally optional. The study argues that ka is a coherence building device that enables speakers to explicitly signal a particular range of underlying semantic and information-structure relationships between units of propositions. In certain constructions, ka is found to be associated with given or accessible referents and sequences of events that push forward the narrative timeline. The study concludes that ka is more related to the concept of a “focus of assertion” than to any concept of “topic”.
Description
Keywords
Discourse Grammar, Information Packaging, Information Structure, Narrative, Tai-Kadai