Signaling discourse structure: the marking of discourse topic boundaries in Jahai and Mah Meri spontaneous narratives

Summary, in English

This study has examined how the right edge of a discourse topic is signaled through the use of F0, duration, and particles in the two Aslian languages Jahai and Mah Meri. The goals of this study were to contribute to the knowledge of these languages, compare them to the related Kammu language in the search for similarities that could be applied to Austroasiatic as a whole, and to explore what kind of analysis is possible with a material not collected for prosodic research.

By comparing smaller non-topic-final and topic-final discourse units to each other, it has been shown that F0, duration, and particles all do signal the end of a discourse topic, though in different ways depending on the language in question. A hypothesis was proposed that, while Kammu and Mah Meri display a similar use of F0 to mark the end of a discourse topic, Jahai and Kammu might belong to the same category when it comes to prosodic typology, and although little could be said on Austroasiatic as a whole, the results can be used in future studies on this topic. Finally, it was shown that working with this kind of material can indeed yield interesting and significant results.

• Author: Otto Ewald
• Department/s: General Linguistics
• Publishing year: 2013
• Language: English
• Full text: Available as PDF - 6 MB; Download statistics
• Document type: Student publication for Bachelor's degree
• Topic: Languages and Literatures
• Keywords: Mah Meri; Jahai; prosody; discourse topic; discourse structure; Austroasiatic; Aslian; particles; pitch; duration
• Supervisor: Anastasia Karlsson (researcher); Niclas Burenhult (Ph.D.); Nicole Kruspe (Dr)