- 333 - specifically if “messy” applies to their play or to their appearance but we have no problem
picturing them, and Sheiba’s “the round-faced lady’s boy” - does HE have a round face too? There are three examples in the data that include noteworthy errors: the first
demonstrates Sakander’s problem with the order of English adjectives:
“YOU can GO to the GREEN LAND to FETCH your SHEEP some GREEN GRASS - GREEN LOVely GRASS.”
C256 Mature native speakers put “lovely” before “green”; however, in line 38, he has “his sheep
can eat the sweet green grass”, where he does place the colour adjective next to the noun. Fariba puts “big” and “large” together in:
ON CHRISTmas he saw a BIG LARGE SNOWman. A10
instead of “a great big snowman”, where “great” acts as an intensifier rather than as a synonym for “large” or “big”. She also comes up with an ingeniously creative compound
expression when she cannot remember the word “caretaker”: A
D [N - V - P] N But THEN he WENT to the SCHOOL-look-after MAN. C10
See chapter 5, page 163, for a possible derivation of this invention.
7.3.5 Optional Prepositional Phrases
By “optional prepositional phrases” we mean phrases which are not included in Labov’s eight elements of the basic narrative clause. Because they are not part of the basic narrative
clause they must, therefore, constitute evaluative departures from it. It is of interest to look at the semantic roles which they encode; the roles exemplified in the fourteen data samples
are: accompaniment, benefactive, source, instrument, and an additional locative or temporal phrase, and these roles are crucial to the effectiveness of the event descriptions. Our first
two examples come from the openings of Sheiba’s Story B1 and Fariba’s Story C: ONE day FAther Christmas WOKE UP EARly in the MORning.
Here “in the morning” adds to the meaning of “early” and emphasizes the importance of the temporal setting to the narrative. It seems that significant happenings are often
associated with early rising, in both fact and fiction. ONE DAY BILly-the-TWIT was GOing somewhere with his COWS.
- 334 - In Fariba’s example we find an accompaniment phrase which is much more effective than
if she had said, “One day Billy was taking his cows somewhere”, which rather suggests that he has nothing special in mind; whereas Fariba’s opening implies that Billy and his cows
were definitely on the move. The following clauses tell us why: 24
THEN the PEOple said of his land, “
GO to another COUNtry beFORE you get BEAT.”
Sakander gives us examples of the three semantic roles, benefactive, source, and instrument; the first comes from his Story C:
912 HE said, “
I think I’ll GO to the GREEN LAND and GET some GRASS for MY SHEEP. “
Here the benefactive emphasizes the importance to Billy of the welfare of his livestock. If he had said, “I’ll go…and get my sheep some grass”, we might well have been tempted to
say “So what?” The second example comes from his Story D: 57
And Father CHRISTmas SAID, “
CHILdren ALways WANT PRESents but they alREADy HAVE presents from ME.”
A cross and grumpy Father Christmas is complaining that children are never satisfied with what they have been given. Perhaps he is saying, “They had some last year - won’t those
do?” The “from me” source seems to suggest that he thinks he has discharged his responsibility to them already. Sakander’s last example is from Story E:
56 BEN was a football MAN and HE could do ANything with BALLS -
FOOTballs. The instrumental “with balls” is a most important piece of additional information here, and
Sakander follows this idea through by spelling out for us exactly what he could do with them in lines 810 see p. 327. Fehdah provides us with the example of a double locative
in his Story F: 6
And he WENT to the SHOP beHIND the SHOP. His narrative is not a coherent whole so he does not really explain the signficance of “the
shop behind a shop”. Does he mean a small shop in a lean-to behind a bigger shop? He does not tell us; however, we do at least know exactly where his Mr. Wong went even if he
does not tell us why.
- 335 -
7.3.6 Double Appositives
