Dogon reported discourse markers: The Ben Tey quotative topicalizer
-
Abbie Hantgan
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to re-evaluate the interpretation of a particle that has hitherto been analyzed as a marker either of addressee or the subject of a quoted clause in Ben Tey (Dogon, Mali). As both of these interpretations are typologically rare if not unique, a broader conceptualization for the particle as a quotative topic marker is proposed here. Data are from a newly compiled cross-linguistic annotated corpus of discourse reports within textual contexts. Along with data presentation and analysis, a methodology is illustrated for multilingual comparative corpus construction for the analysis of discourse reporting strategies.
Funding source: European Research Council (ERC)
Award Identifier / Grant number: 758232
Funding source: US National Science Foundation
Award Identifier / Grant number: BCS-0537435
Acknowledgments
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 758232), “Discourse reporting in African storytelling” of which Tatiana Nikitina is the Principal investigator. The research was partially funded by US National Science Foundation grant BCS-0537435, “Dogon languages of Mali” of which Jeffrey Heath is the Principal investigator. I am indebted to Jeffrey Heath and his language consultants in Mali, who provided the data for this research. I am also grateful to the entire Speech Reporting team and the audience members at the “Reported Discourse across Languages and Cultures” workshop that was held at CNRS-LLACAN in May of 2019. I very much appreciate the in-depth comments and suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers of this work, and the journal editors for their additional comments. Of course, all remaining errors and shortcomings are solely my responsibility.
The complete Ben Tey dataset used for this project is available in the Supplemental Materials (https://osf.io/pkzj9/). The following table provides an overview of Dogon reported discourse markers.
Quotative clause (qc) and noun phrase markers (qnp) across the Dogon languages organized according to phylogenetic grouping: note the diversity among the Dogon languages’ quotative markers and the importance of reconstruction of pronouns for the accurate genetic groupings of the Dogon languages.
| Logophoric (sg) | qnp | qc | Language | Grouping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| á | maa | wa ∼ ba | Ben Tey | NE Dogon |
| á | (unknown) | wa | Bankan Tey | NE Dogon |
| á | wa | wa | Nanga | NE Dogon |
| ɛ̀nɛ́, ìnɛ́ (rare) | (none) | wa | Jamsay | NE Dogon |
| ɛ̀lɛ́ | (unknown) | wa | Perge Tegu | NE Dogon |
| àsí | (ká) | (none) | Toro Tegu | NE Dogon |
| là | (kà)/(wa) | (none) | Tomo Kan | SE Dogon |
| ɛ̀nɛ́ | wà | wà | Togo Kan | SE Dogon |
| ìnɔ̀ɔ̀, ìnɛ̌-m (dialectal variant) | ɔ̀ɔ̀ | ɔ̀ɔ̀ | Yorno So | SE Dogon |
| ǹjèmɛ́ | wa | wa | Donno So | SE Dogon |
| ǹdɛ̀mɔ́ | wa | wa | Tommo So | SE Dogon |
| á | wà | (w)à | Yanda Dom | NW Dogon |
| á, -m (on verb for clausal subject) | wa | wa | Tebul Ure | NW Dogon |
| (none) | wa | wa | Najamba | NW Dogon |
| mmɛ́ | wá | wá | Dogul Dom | NW Dogon |
| (none) | wà | wà | Tiranige | SW Dogon |
| (none) | (none) | wa | Bunoge | SW Dogon |
| à | (unknown) | wáà | Mombo | SW Dogon |
| á | (none) | wá | Penange | SW Dogon |
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Predicative possession across Western Iranian languages
- Nasality in Dagbani prosody
- Variable D-marking on proper naming expressions: A typological study
- Dogon reported discourse markers: The Ben Tey quotative topicalizer
- Spanish [auto + V + se] constructions
- Datives with psych nouns and adjectives in Basque
- Folklore as an evidential category
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Predicative possession across Western Iranian languages
- Nasality in Dagbani prosody
- Variable D-marking on proper naming expressions: A typological study
- Dogon reported discourse markers: The Ben Tey quotative topicalizer
- Spanish [auto + V + se] constructions
- Datives with psych nouns and adjectives in Basque
- Folklore as an evidential category
