The spacer nynä ‘SP2’

7.2 The spacer nynä ‘SP2’

The spacer nynä occurs between a verb of saying, thinking, feeling, desire, knowledge, or evaluation and a completive clause. 9 It instructs the hearer to interpret what follows as the content of a thought, as in example 143a, an evaluation, as in 143b, or a represented speech, as in 143c and 143d, depending on the lexical meaning of the preceding verb. 143 a. n -luë bhlä nynä ɔ kuu- bhlä 1 S think_falsely: CP PST 1: LOP SP 2 3 S die: CP PST 1: LOP ‘I had thought that he had died.’ [filsprod 122–123] b. ɩ - ŋwa kʋ nynä n pä yɩ -a bhunünü NHP be_suitable: CP CV SP 2 1 S throw now 1 P home:stories ‘… it is a good thing that I now tell our own stories …’ [sigo 21] c. kä - Laagɔzuzuu -sonöɔ lä ASF God:spirit: DEF speak: APL :3 S : CP LOP ‘Gods angel said to him, nynä -nn -lä yɩɔ - zɩkä mʋ -sää SP 2 2 S : XNEG DP 2 anymore today VPC speak “As of today you will no longer be able to speak.”’ [elisabet 39–40] d. nɩ - Laagɔzuzuu -s onöɔ bhä s ɩɩ ADD 1 God:spirit: DEF speak: APL :3 S : CP PST ADD 3 ‘Then an angel from God had spoken to her, too, saying nynä ɔ yi bhä s ɩɩ yu gää SP 2 3 S XFUT PST ADD 3 child procreate: AP that she also would give birth to a child.’ [elisabet 55–56] The spacer nynä can be combined with the additive -mä ‘ADD4’ see §8.1.4, as in example 144. 144 -aa - wʋ cii- nynä -mä -a gʋ nyima 1 P : XNEG CNT 2 say: CP SP 2 ADD 4 1 P XPOT : NH 3 ruin ‘We did not want to lit. we did not say we would destroy it, -mä -a gʋ - anyɩa cifio yëku fä ADD 4 1 P XPOT : NH 3 1 P : GEN chief: DEF beside send rather we are going to send it to your chief.’ [neyo 14.2–14.4] In example 145 the speech verb is implied. 145 -n yää ylʋ -bhlogbe mnɛ nyɛ 2 S XPER :1 SO day one_single animal give ‘Have you ever given me an animal nynä n -yä naa nagwɩä kä lü -a SP 2 1 S ADD 2 1 S : GEN friend: PL XPOT eat Q telling me I could eat with my friends?’ [filsprod 256–257] 9 It could therefore also be considered as a complementizer see Schachter 1985:50. As for its form, it seems plausible to consider it as a coalescence of the connective ‘n ɩ ‘ADD1’ see §8.1.1 and the speech margin lä see §6.2. 74 8 Pragmatic connectives The world’s languages can be divided into two groups, as far as connectives are concerned. In one group, clauses are normally conjoined without a connective and in the other group they are normally conjoined with a connective. In the latter group, the connective that occurs most frequently may be called the default connective. Godié belongs to the former group of languages where clauses are normally conjoined without a connective. This means that the presence of a connective is significant and needs to be seen as the marked way of conjoining discourse units in Godié. A pragmatic connective is a linguistic marker whose function is to specify the way in which information expressed in clauses or sentences—and sometimes in larger groupings—is to be connected. The category of pragmatic connectives according to this definition, therefore, not only comprises the elements that have traditionally been called coordinating or subordinating conjunctions, but it also includes a variety of other grammatical categories, such as adverbs e.g., ‘also’, ‘even’, ‘indeed’ in English, adverbial expressions e.g., ‘after all’, and particles. Pragmatic connectives do not contribute to the semantic content of the connected items; rather, they facilitate the interpretation process for the hearer by helping to economise on processing effort and thus decreasing the risk of misunderstanding. 1 Some connectives explicitly refer to the discourse context by some anaphoric item such as ‘that’ e.g., ‘after that’ or ‘because of that’, thus specifying in their conceptual meaning in which way what follows is to be connected to what precedes. Their function is similar to that of situational points of departure see §4.3. It is therefore not surprising that some connectives in fact derive from points of departure and can still be analysed as such. Most connectives, however, do not encode any kind of conceptual meaning. Rather, their lexical meaning is of a procedural nature in that it consists of a single and general instruction or constraint for interpretation. Connectives are therefore most adequately described by making this instruction explicit. What Levinsohn 2000:69 says about conjunctions is certainly true for all pragmatic connectives: When a reader encounters a conjunction in a text, the conjunction always constrains him or her to relate what follows to the context in the same way. The different senses that grammarians identify are produced by the same constraint being applied in different contexts. [emphasis in original] Different possible translations of a connective in different contexts thus reflect these different contexts, rather than different “meanings” of the connective in question. The claim that the meaning of a connective can be expressed in one single general instruction for interpretation is a fairly strong one to make, especially given that the description of a conjunction, for instance, has traditionally aimed at describing the different “meanings” of the element in different contexts. In this study, however, such “meanings” are considered contextual effects, being constructed by the hearer in the various contexts on the basis of the general instruction for interpretation given by the connective. The instruction for interpretation given by a connective applies to its occurrence in both narrative and non-narrative material. The description of Godié connectives in this chapter will therefore not only draw on narrative texts for the examples, as in the other chapters, but also use examples drawn from non-narrative material. On the basis of the type of instruction given by a connective, the following three types of connectives will be distinguished here: additive connectives, countering connectives, and conclusive connectives. The following three major sections describe these three types of connectives in Godié. 1 In terms of Relevance Theory, connectives thus guide the hearer’s search for optimal relevance see Blass 1990:126f..

8.1 Additive connectives