This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa con... more This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa conversational oral stories of personal experience to test the accuracy of Robert E. Longacre's statement that storyline material is the "main stuff" from which macrostructural summaries are constructed (1989a:444). This is done by answering the question: What types of clausal information are employed in the construction of the macrostructural summaries of the Sherpa texts and how often is each type employed? Sherpa is a Central Bodish Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern Nepal, primarily in the Solu-Khumbu district just south of Mt. Everest. The Solu dialect is spoken in the southernmost region of the district. Sherpa is an AOV (SOV) language with verbal suffixes that encode evidentiality and partially encode tense and aspect. A macrosegmentation of the texts revealed that at least three devices are necessary to indicate a boundary between thematic paragraphs, and it was necessary for at least one of these devices to be a break on one of Givón’s (1984) four unities. Regarding narrative superstructure, it was found that each story had at least one peak, and one story had two peaks. Three of the six peaks encoded the climax, with two encoding the inciting moment, and one encoding the developing conflict. Five of Longacre’s (1996) six peak marking devices were used in the Sherpa texts: 1. Change of pace, 2. a concentration of participants, 3. the occurrence of particles, onomatopoeia, and other phonetic devices, 4. heightened vividness, and 5. rhetorical underlining. A change in vantage point and/or orientation was not employed as a peak marking device in the Sherpa texts. In the analysis of clausal information, nine types were described. These included a storyline Band and eight supportive types: 1. Flashback A, 2. Background actions, 3. Flashback B, 4. Background activities, 5. Setting, 6. Irrealis, 7. Evaluation, and 8. Cohesion. The Sherpa stories employed between three and five storyline clause patterns. Only one story employed the same device in over half of its storyline clauses. These results suggest a modification of the storyline marking scheme posited by Schöttelndreyer (1978), in which narrative sub-genres were characterized by one or two storyline marking devices. The macroanalysis resulted in a macrostructural summary for each text. Information from all nine clausal information types were employed in the formulation of these summaries. The storyline was the origin of 38% of information units while the supportive Bands accounted for 62%. However, storyline material was the most employed individual type. Background action was the second most used, accounting for 13%. The least employed types were evaluation and cohesive, with 2% each. These results seem to indicate that a macroanalysis based on storyline alone as input would not accurately summarize the global semantic content of the Sherpa texts. Therefore, this study is not in agreement with Longacre’s (1989a:444) statement about the thematic importance of storyline material. Rather, these results suggest that there are some narrative sub-genres in some languages in which supportive information has at least as much global thematic prominence as storyline information.
The storyline clauses of a narrative push a story forward through time while supportive clauses s... more The storyline clauses of a narrative push a story forward through time while supportive clauses slow down or stop the temporal movement of a story. This distinction between the functions of event clauses and non-event clauses in narrative discourse has been studied in various languages around the world.
This paper applies a textlinguistics approach to discourse to describe the morpho-syntactic and lexico-semanic features that distinguish types of storyline clauses from types of supportive material in five Sherpa personal experience narratives. Once the storyline markers are described, I then compare my results with Schöttelndreyer’s (1978) study of storyline in Sherpa. Based on this comparison, I suggest a reevaluation of Schöttelndreyer’s classification of personal experience narratives. While Schöttelndreyer suggests that there are four personal experience narrative genres each normally characterized by one storyline marker, the analysis presented in this paper leads to the conclusion that the norm is for personal experience narratives to exhibit multiple storyline markers with each marker performing a different evidential or attitudinal function rather than representing a primary indicator of genre.
This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa con... more This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa conversational oral stories of personal experience to test the accuracy of Robert E. Longacre's statement that storyline material is the "main stuff" from which macrostructural summaries are constructed (1989a:444). This is done by answering the question: What types of clausal information are employed in the construction of the macrostructural summaries of the Sherpa texts and how often is each type employed?
Sherpa is a Central Bodish Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern Nepal, primarily in the Solu-Khumbu district just south of Mt. Everest. The Solu dialect is spoken in the southernmost region of the district. Sherpa is an AOV (SOV) language with verbal suffixes that encode evidentiality and partially encode tense and aspect.
A macrosegmentation of the texts revealed that at least three devices are necessary to indicate a boundary between thematic paragraphs, and it was necessary for at least one of these devices to be a break on one of Givón’s (1984) four unities.
Regarding narrative superstructure, it was found that each story had at least one peak, and one story had two peaks. Three of the six peaks encoded the climax, with two encoding the inciting moment, and one encoding the developing conflict.
Five of Longacre’s (1996) six peak marking devices were used in the Sherpa texts: 1. Change of pace, 2. a concentration of participants, 3. the occurrence of particles, onomatopoeia, and other phonetic devices, 4. heightened vividness, and 5. rhetorical underlining. A change in vantage point and/or orientation was not employed as a peak marking device in the Sherpa texts.
In the analysis of clausal information, nine types were described. These included a storyline Band and eight supportive types: 1. Flashback A, 2. Background actions, 3. Flashback B, 4. Background activities, 5. Setting, 6. Irrealis, 7. Evaluation, and 8. Cohesion.
The Sherpa stories employed between three and five storyline clause patterns. Only one story employed the same device in over half of its storyline clauses. These results suggest a modification of the storyline marking scheme posited by Schöttelndreyer (1978), in which narrative sub-genres were characterized by one or two storyline marking devices.
The macroanalysis resulted in a macrostructural summary for each text. Information from all nine clausal information types were employed in the formulation of these summaries. The storyline was the origin of 38% of information units while the supportive Bands accounted for 62%. However, storyline material was the most employed individual type. Background action was the second most used, accounting for 13%. The least employed types were evaluation and cohesive, with 2% each. These results seem to indicate that a macroanalysis based on storyline alone as input would not accurately summarize the global semantic content of the Sherpa texts. Therefore, this study is not in agreement with Longacre’s (1989a:444) statement about the thematic importance of storyline material. Rather, these results suggest that there are some narrative sub-genres in some languages in which supportive information has at least as much global thematic prominence as storyline information.
This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa con... more This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa conversational oral stories of personal experience to test the accuracy of Robert E. Longacre's statement that storyline material is the "main stuff" from which macrostructural summaries are constructed (1989a:444). This is done by answering the question: What types of clausal information are employed in the construction of the macrostructural summaries of the Sherpa texts and how often is each type employed? Sherpa is a Central Bodish Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern Nepal, primarily in the Solu-Khumbu district just south of Mt. Everest. The Solu dialect is spoken in the southernmost region of the district. Sherpa is an AOV (SOV) language with verbal suffixes that encode evidentiality and partially encode tense and aspect. A macrosegmentation of the texts revealed that at least three devices are necessary to indicate a boundary between thematic paragraphs, and it was necessary for at least one of these devices to be a break on one of Givón’s (1984) four unities. Regarding narrative superstructure, it was found that each story had at least one peak, and one story had two peaks. Three of the six peaks encoded the climax, with two encoding the inciting moment, and one encoding the developing conflict. Five of Longacre’s (1996) six peak marking devices were used in the Sherpa texts: 1. Change of pace, 2. a concentration of participants, 3. the occurrence of particles, onomatopoeia, and other phonetic devices, 4. heightened vividness, and 5. rhetorical underlining. A change in vantage point and/or orientation was not employed as a peak marking device in the Sherpa texts. In the analysis of clausal information, nine types were described. These included a storyline Band and eight supportive types: 1. Flashback A, 2. Background actions, 3. Flashback B, 4. Background activities, 5. Setting, 6. Irrealis, 7. Evaluation, and 8. Cohesion. The Sherpa stories employed between three and five storyline clause patterns. Only one story employed the same device in over half of its storyline clauses. These results suggest a modification of the storyline marking scheme posited by Schöttelndreyer (1978), in which narrative sub-genres were characterized by one or two storyline marking devices. The macroanalysis resulted in a macrostructural summary for each text. Information from all nine clausal information types were employed in the formulation of these summaries. The storyline was the origin of 38% of information units while the supportive Bands accounted for 62%. However, storyline material was the most employed individual type. Background action was the second most used, accounting for 13%. The least employed types were evaluation and cohesive, with 2% each. These results seem to indicate that a macroanalysis based on storyline alone as input would not accurately summarize the global semantic content of the Sherpa texts. Therefore, this study is not in agreement with Longacre’s (1989a:444) statement about the thematic importance of storyline material. Rather, these results suggest that there are some narrative sub-genres in some languages in which supportive information has at least as much global thematic prominence as storyline information.
The storyline clauses of a narrative push a story forward through time while supportive clauses s... more The storyline clauses of a narrative push a story forward through time while supportive clauses slow down or stop the temporal movement of a story. This distinction between the functions of event clauses and non-event clauses in narrative discourse has been studied in various languages around the world.
This paper applies a textlinguistics approach to discourse to describe the morpho-syntactic and lexico-semanic features that distinguish types of storyline clauses from types of supportive material in five Sherpa personal experience narratives. Once the storyline markers are described, I then compare my results with Schöttelndreyer’s (1978) study of storyline in Sherpa. Based on this comparison, I suggest a reevaluation of Schöttelndreyer’s classification of personal experience narratives. While Schöttelndreyer suggests that there are four personal experience narrative genres each normally characterized by one storyline marker, the analysis presented in this paper leads to the conclusion that the norm is for personal experience narratives to exhibit multiple storyline markers with each marker performing a different evidential or attitudinal function rather than representing a primary indicator of genre.
This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa con... more This thesis studies the relationship between storyline and macrostructure in five Solu Sherpa conversational oral stories of personal experience to test the accuracy of Robert E. Longacre's statement that storyline material is the "main stuff" from which macrostructural summaries are constructed (1989a:444). This is done by answering the question: What types of clausal information are employed in the construction of the macrostructural summaries of the Sherpa texts and how often is each type employed?
Sherpa is a Central Bodish Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern Nepal, primarily in the Solu-Khumbu district just south of Mt. Everest. The Solu dialect is spoken in the southernmost region of the district. Sherpa is an AOV (SOV) language with verbal suffixes that encode evidentiality and partially encode tense and aspect.
A macrosegmentation of the texts revealed that at least three devices are necessary to indicate a boundary between thematic paragraphs, and it was necessary for at least one of these devices to be a break on one of Givón’s (1984) four unities.
Regarding narrative superstructure, it was found that each story had at least one peak, and one story had two peaks. Three of the six peaks encoded the climax, with two encoding the inciting moment, and one encoding the developing conflict.
Five of Longacre’s (1996) six peak marking devices were used in the Sherpa texts: 1. Change of pace, 2. a concentration of participants, 3. the occurrence of particles, onomatopoeia, and other phonetic devices, 4. heightened vividness, and 5. rhetorical underlining. A change in vantage point and/or orientation was not employed as a peak marking device in the Sherpa texts.
In the analysis of clausal information, nine types were described. These included a storyline Band and eight supportive types: 1. Flashback A, 2. Background actions, 3. Flashback B, 4. Background activities, 5. Setting, 6. Irrealis, 7. Evaluation, and 8. Cohesion.
The Sherpa stories employed between three and five storyline clause patterns. Only one story employed the same device in over half of its storyline clauses. These results suggest a modification of the storyline marking scheme posited by Schöttelndreyer (1978), in which narrative sub-genres were characterized by one or two storyline marking devices.
The macroanalysis resulted in a macrostructural summary for each text. Information from all nine clausal information types were employed in the formulation of these summaries. The storyline was the origin of 38% of information units while the supportive Bands accounted for 62%. However, storyline material was the most employed individual type. Background action was the second most used, accounting for 13%. The least employed types were evaluation and cohesive, with 2% each. These results seem to indicate that a macroanalysis based on storyline alone as input would not accurately summarize the global semantic content of the Sherpa texts. Therefore, this study is not in agreement with Longacre’s (1989a:444) statement about the thematic importance of storyline material. Rather, these results suggest that there are some narrative sub-genres in some languages in which supportive information has at least as much global thematic prominence as storyline information.
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Papers by David E Greninger
This paper applies a textlinguistics approach to discourse to describe the morpho-syntactic and lexico-semanic features that distinguish types of storyline clauses from types of supportive material in five Sherpa personal experience narratives. Once the storyline markers are described, I then compare my results with Schöttelndreyer’s (1978) study of storyline in Sherpa. Based on this comparison, I suggest a reevaluation of Schöttelndreyer’s classification of personal experience narratives. While Schöttelndreyer suggests that there are four personal experience narrative genres each normally characterized by one storyline marker, the analysis presented in this paper leads to the conclusion that the norm is for personal experience narratives to exhibit multiple storyline markers with each marker performing a different evidential or attitudinal function rather than representing a primary indicator of genre.
Sherpa is a Central Bodish Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern Nepal, primarily in the Solu-Khumbu district just south of Mt. Everest. The Solu dialect is spoken in the southernmost region of the district. Sherpa is an AOV (SOV) language with verbal suffixes that encode evidentiality and partially encode tense and aspect.
A macrosegmentation of the texts revealed that at least three devices are necessary to indicate a boundary between thematic paragraphs, and it was necessary for at least one of these devices to be a break on one of Givón’s (1984) four unities.
Regarding narrative superstructure, it was found that each story had at least one peak, and one story had two peaks. Three of the six peaks encoded the climax, with two encoding the inciting moment, and one encoding the developing conflict.
Five of Longacre’s (1996) six peak marking devices were used in the Sherpa texts: 1. Change of pace, 2. a concentration of participants, 3. the occurrence of particles, onomatopoeia, and other phonetic devices, 4. heightened vividness, and 5. rhetorical underlining. A change in vantage point and/or orientation was not employed as a peak marking device in the Sherpa texts.
In the analysis of clausal information, nine types were described. These included a storyline Band and eight supportive types: 1. Flashback A, 2. Background actions, 3. Flashback B, 4. Background activities, 5. Setting, 6. Irrealis, 7. Evaluation, and 8. Cohesion.
The Sherpa stories employed between three and five storyline clause patterns. Only one story employed the same device in over half of its storyline clauses. These results suggest a modification of the storyline marking scheme posited by Schöttelndreyer (1978), in which narrative sub-genres were characterized by one or two storyline marking devices.
The macroanalysis resulted in a macrostructural summary for each text. Information from all nine clausal information types were employed in the formulation of these summaries. The storyline was the origin of 38% of information units while the supportive Bands accounted for 62%. However, storyline material was the most employed individual type. Background action was the second most used, accounting for 13%. The least employed types were evaluation and cohesive, with 2% each.
These results seem to indicate that a macroanalysis based on storyline alone as input would not accurately summarize the global semantic content of the Sherpa texts. Therefore, this study is not in agreement with Longacre’s (1989a:444) statement about the thematic importance of storyline material. Rather, these results suggest that there are some narrative sub-genres in some languages in which supportive information has at least as much global thematic prominence as storyline information.
This paper applies a textlinguistics approach to discourse to describe the morpho-syntactic and lexico-semanic features that distinguish types of storyline clauses from types of supportive material in five Sherpa personal experience narratives. Once the storyline markers are described, I then compare my results with Schöttelndreyer’s (1978) study of storyline in Sherpa. Based on this comparison, I suggest a reevaluation of Schöttelndreyer’s classification of personal experience narratives. While Schöttelndreyer suggests that there are four personal experience narrative genres each normally characterized by one storyline marker, the analysis presented in this paper leads to the conclusion that the norm is for personal experience narratives to exhibit multiple storyline markers with each marker performing a different evidential or attitudinal function rather than representing a primary indicator of genre.
Sherpa is a Central Bodish Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern Nepal, primarily in the Solu-Khumbu district just south of Mt. Everest. The Solu dialect is spoken in the southernmost region of the district. Sherpa is an AOV (SOV) language with verbal suffixes that encode evidentiality and partially encode tense and aspect.
A macrosegmentation of the texts revealed that at least three devices are necessary to indicate a boundary between thematic paragraphs, and it was necessary for at least one of these devices to be a break on one of Givón’s (1984) four unities.
Regarding narrative superstructure, it was found that each story had at least one peak, and one story had two peaks. Three of the six peaks encoded the climax, with two encoding the inciting moment, and one encoding the developing conflict.
Five of Longacre’s (1996) six peak marking devices were used in the Sherpa texts: 1. Change of pace, 2. a concentration of participants, 3. the occurrence of particles, onomatopoeia, and other phonetic devices, 4. heightened vividness, and 5. rhetorical underlining. A change in vantage point and/or orientation was not employed as a peak marking device in the Sherpa texts.
In the analysis of clausal information, nine types were described. These included a storyline Band and eight supportive types: 1. Flashback A, 2. Background actions, 3. Flashback B, 4. Background activities, 5. Setting, 6. Irrealis, 7. Evaluation, and 8. Cohesion.
The Sherpa stories employed between three and five storyline clause patterns. Only one story employed the same device in over half of its storyline clauses. These results suggest a modification of the storyline marking scheme posited by Schöttelndreyer (1978), in which narrative sub-genres were characterized by one or two storyline marking devices.
The macroanalysis resulted in a macrostructural summary for each text. Information from all nine clausal information types were employed in the formulation of these summaries. The storyline was the origin of 38% of information units while the supportive Bands accounted for 62%. However, storyline material was the most employed individual type. Background action was the second most used, accounting for 13%. The least employed types were evaluation and cohesive, with 2% each.
These results seem to indicate that a macroanalysis based on storyline alone as input would not accurately summarize the global semantic content of the Sherpa texts. Therefore, this study is not in agreement with Longacre’s (1989a:444) statement about the thematic importance of storyline material. Rather, these results suggest that there are some narrative sub-genres in some languages in which supportive information has at least as much global thematic prominence as storyline information.