Token codeswitching and language alternation in narrative discourse: a functional-pragmatic approach

This study is concerned with two phenomena of language alternation in biographic narrations in Yiddish and Low German, based on spoken language data recorded between 1988 and 1995. In both phenomena language alternation serves as an additional communicative tool which can be applied by bilingual speakers to enlarge their set of interactional devices in order to ensure a smoother or more pointed processing of communicative aims. The first phenomenon is a narrative strategy I call Token Cod-eswitching: In a bilingual narrative culminating in a line of reported speech, a single element of L2 indicates the original language of the reconstructed dialogue – a token for a quote. The second phenomenon has to do with directing procedures, carried out by the speaker and aimed at guiding the hearer's attention, which are frequently carried out in L2, supporting the hearer's attention at crucial points in the interaction. Both phenomena are analyzed following a model of narrative discourse as proposed in the framework of Functional Pragmatics. The model allows the adoption of an integral approach to previous findings in code-switching research.

Word order in Yiddish narrative discourse

Based on data from spoken narrative discourse in Yiddish, this paper analyses two structures common in Yiddish narrations: The placement of the finite verb in the first position of a declarative sentence, and topicalization.Like German, Yiddish word order is generally centered around a verb-second rule. However, both Yiddish and spoken German show configurations of word order that go against the rule, where the finite verb occupies the first position of the utterance. From a functional-pragmatic point of view, these structures can be said to serve special purposes in the interaction between speaker and listener, sometimes in particular discourse types.Differences and similarities in word order between Yiddish and German enable us to comment on the relationship between these two closely related languages.

A linguistic resurrection? Aller + infinitive in narrative past contexts

This article studies the go periphrasis emerging in Contemporary French narrations and compares it with the narrative go periphrasis found in Middle French.

Il était une fois un match de foot:L'événement sportif comme objet de narration

L’analyse des temps de la narration n’est pas chose nouvelle. Souvent, ce sont les narrations orales ‘de tous les jours’ qui ont préoccupé les linguistes (Labov & Waletzky 1967, Bres 1994). Mais qu’en est-il de l’usage des temps dans les narrations écrites telles qu’on les trouve dans la presse sportive? On se fondera ici sur un corpus d’articles du 1er juillet 2002, tirés de la presse francophone (parisienne, régionale, belge et algérienne) et consacrés à la finale de la Coupe du Monde de football (Labeau 2002b). A quels temps a-t-on recours pour narrer ces exploits sportifs ? Le passé simple a-t-il toujours sa place dans ce genre « épique », ou s’est-il vu supplanter par d’autres formes telles le passé composé, le présent ou l’imparfait de narration… ? (Engel 1990) Nous allons nous concentrer sur deux aspects de l’emploi des temps. D’une part, la presse sportive constitue-t-elle un sous-genre distinct ? D’autre part, des différences régionales apparaissent-elles ? Nous tenterons de voir si les approches textuelles se reflètent dans l’emploi des temps des narrations étudiées. Termes clefs Narration - presse sportive – temps - presse régionale – presse francophone - genre

The narrative construction va + infinitive in contemporary French:a linguistic phoenix risen from its medieval ashes?

In Old and Middle French (12th-16th centuries), va ["goes"] + inf was used in narrations in the past. A similar usage seems to have reappeared and be spreading today. However, the old construction combined with past Tenses whereas the new one is found only with forms anchored in present and future. We argue that the conTemporary construction derives not from the old one, but from a metanarrative construction. On the basis of its future in Terpretation, va + inf aids the organization of the narration, announcing subsequent events through a hypernymic process. The periphrasis thus approaches a narrative value by projecting the time of events onto that of narration. With the disappearance of all deictic markers, the go-periphrases are no longer hypernyms: they appear on the same temporal line of events as the neighboring situations and are understood as fully completed. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.