Discourse Features of Ten Languages of West-Central Africa (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780883126196)

Presents 12 papers on coherence, participant reference, and Relevance Theory in Niger-Congo and Chadic languages of Cameroon. The papers are organized into three sections to explain the linguistic features of Niger-Congo and Chadic languages of Cameroon whose meaning can only be explained by taking into account domains larger than the sentence. Folk tales and other narratives are used to illustrate discourse features of 10 languages from Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Zaïre. The first section concentrates on how coherence is maintained in a text when the author introduces a local discontinuity. The second section identifies factors which affect the amount of encoding used as a speaker refers to participants throughout a discourse. The third section presents data that applies insights from Relevance Theory. Describes markers of prominence and backgrounding.

Author: Stephen H. Levinsohn
ISBN-10: 0883126192
ISBN-13: 9780883126196
Publisher: Sil International, Global Publishing
Language: English
Published: 01/01/1995
Pages: 252
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.53d