The role of songs in traditional Digo narratives

1.3.7 The role of songs in traditional Digo narratives

Songs are a common feature of traditional stories in many cultures. In Digo narrative texts, songs often occur at important points in the story, such as the transition from the inciting episode to the developmental episodes, where they provide a summary of or a commentary on the story. The inciting episodes in Text 2 and Text 3 both end with a song 2.10a–c and 3.8–3.9d which summarizes the situation up to that point. In Text 2, a song also occurs when Mwiya’s half-brother finds the pit where he has been buried 2.18a–b, this time identifying the half-brother’s mother as the culprit. Songs are referred to just before the peak 2.24, and in the peak episode 2.26 and 2.27. In a number of Bantu languages, including Digo, songs that occur in narratives use either what appears to be an archaic form of the language or the language of a neighboring group. This is seen in 3.8–3.9d. The language used in this song is either Duruma the language of a related group living inland from the Digo or an archaic form of Digo; the tense prefix dzi- in 3.8 is the Duruma form of the hodiernal past tense marker used in relative clauses, and ka- in lines 3.8 and 3.9a–c is the diminutive noun class prefix noun class 12, which is found in neighboring languages but which is no longer used in Digo. 3.8 Si-mi dzi-ku-tsuph-a ka-dziwe. x2 NEG -1 SG HOD -2 SG -throw- FV 12-5.stone 3.9a U-ka-tsuph-iw-a ni Mbodze ka-dziwe, 2 SG - SEQ -throw- PAS - FV COP NAME 12-5.stone 3.9b na ndugu-ye Matsozi ka-dziwe, COM 9.sibling-9.3 SG . POS NAME 12-5.stone 3.9c ka-dziwe ngal-a ka-dziwe, nga-a iibu. 12-5.stone shine- FV 12-5.stone shine- FV brightly ‘It is not I who threw the small stone. It is not I who threw the small stone. You were thrown by Mbodze’s small stone, with her sister Matsozi’s small stone, small stone shine small stone, shine brightly.’ 2 Continuity and progression Within a text it is possible to distinguish both episodes and paragraphs. Episodes are dependent on the content of the narrative itself; each episode serves a distinct purpose within the narrative as a whole. Thus, an orientation section is identifiable because it serves the function within the story of introducing the major characters and setting the scene, and an inciting episode is identifiable because it serves the function of initiating the problem or situation upon which the story will hinge, and so forth. Paragraphs differ from episodes in that their purpose is to help the hearer or reader process the text. This is achieved by grouping together closely related material into a manageable chunk of information. 3 Continuity of participants, time and place is usually maintained within a paragraph or if there is a change of time or place, this is usually an expected rather than an abrupt change, and so paragraph breaks correspond to places in the text where there is a discontinuity of some kind. To see how this works in practice, we will 3 Longacre 1976:276 states: “The paragraph is the developmental unit of discourse. It is the typical unit of argumentation or exhortation in hortatory discourse, of explanation and exposition in expository discourse, and of episode in narrative discourse.” I differ from Longacre in that I do not consider paragraphs to be the “typical unit” of episode. Episode boundaries and paragraph boundaries may coincide, but they need not. In a very short story, a single paragraph may contain more than one thematic unit; conversely, in a longer story one episode may consist of a number of paragraphs. first look at the paragraphs in Text 2, Mwiya anatiwa dibwani ni mkaza ise Mwiya is put in a pit by his father’s wife.

2.1 Paragraphs in text 2 Mwiya anatiwa dibwani ni mkaza ise