Word Order Pragmatics and Narrative Functions in Garrwa* * This paper has developed from a presentation given at the 2003 “Blackwood” Workshop on Australian Languages. Many thanks to the Garrwa people who have generously allowed me to record them. And thanks also to Jane Simpson, Mary Laughren and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions. I take responsibility for any remaining errors

Bibliographic Data

ID21099085
AuthorsIlana Mushin (0000-0002-1896-9624, The University of Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume25
Issue2
Pages253-273
Publication date2005-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Journal of Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0726-8602 • E-ISSN: 1469-2996
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07268600500233027
OpenAlexW2087025910
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited18

This paper presents an analysis of the order of full noun phrase arguments with respect to the verb in Garrwa non-personal narrative. Word order in this corpus is shown to be motivated by a combination of established pragmatic relations (here characterized as kontrast and rheme, following Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998 Vallduví, E and Vilkuna, M. 1998. “‘On rheme and kontrast’”. In The limits of syntax. Syntax and Semantics, Edited by: Cullicover, P and McNally, L. Vol. 29, 79–108. New York: Academic Press. [Google Scholar]), and some specific narrative functions relating to perspective structure (eg. shifts from one character's perspective to another). I also argue that the particular patterns found in the Garrwa corpus are related to its status as a verb initial language, typologically unusual in the Australian context. The results present a nice illustration of the need for close discourse based analyses of word order pragmatics, before universal primitive notions like ‘focus’ and ‘topic’, terms which have been commonly used in the Australianist literature, should be adopted

Context (archaeology) · Focus (optics) · Linguistics · Narrative · Noun · Noun phrase · Perspective (graphical) · Pragmatics · Semantics (computer science) · Sociology · Syntax · Verb · Word order · Artificial Intelligence · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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