6.38c [hare to lion and man]
waamba he said – past tense 6.39a
[lion to hare] Simba Lion
achiamba he said – consecutive tense 6.42a
[hare to man] Yu tsungula This hare achiamba he said – consecutive tense
6.44b [hare to lion]
anambwa he is told – continuous aspect, passive verb, lion is subject
6.45 [lion to hare]
Simba Lion waamba he said – past tense
6.46c [lion to hare]
anaamba he says – continuous aspect 6.48a
[hare to man] Tsungula Hare
anaamba he says – continuous aspect 6.53a
[man to woman] yuya mchetu wauzwa ni mlumewe
that woman was asked by her husband 6.54a
[woman to man] Anaamba She says – continuous aspect
6.57a [man to woman]
Yuya bwana That man waamba he said – past tense In 17 out of 19 direct speeches, the speech introducer consists of the verb amba say alone. In line
6.7 the verb iha call is used and in line 6.53a the verb uza ask is used. Past and consecutive tenses and continuous aspect are used, with no apparent functional difference between them.
The text contains a number of close conversations. Closed conversations also called ‘tight-knit conversations’ involve two or occasionally more speakers responding to each other in turn, without
any intervening events or background narration. The longest closed conversation in Text 6 occurs between the lion and the man in lines 6.10–6.16. The lion is named in 6.9 before he speaks in 6.10–6.11,
and then the man is named before he speaks in 6.12. Now that the speakers have been established, the speaker is not identified again at the start of each turn. The narrators keeps track of the one who is
speaking by alternating between active and passive verb forms:
6.10 lion says
active verb form 6.12
man said active verb form
6.13 He is told by the lion passive verb form
6.14 He lion says
active verb form 6.15
He man is told passive verb form
8.3 Vocatives
When one participant starts to speak to another participant in Digo narratives, this is very often indicated by the use of a vocative—that is, an expression often involving a pronoun which is used to
attract the hearer’s attention. Most of the conversations in Text 6 begin with the vocative pronoun we plus a noun identifying the addressee: 6.7 We mchina tsakee You owner of the forest, 6.10, 6.31b, and
6.42b We bwana You sir and 6.44c We simba You lion. In 6.7 the word tsakee consists of the noun tsaka forest plus the lengthened final vowel ee which indicates the vocative. This lengthened final
vowel can also be added to proper names when calling a person, e.g. Omari-ee ‘Hey Omari’. In 6.53c we you is used without an accompanying noun near the end of the sentence. In Text 2, one of the two
direct speeches begins Uwe mwana... You child... using the regular form of the second person singular pronoun uwe.
9 Emphasis
In this section, we will look at how emphasis also called ‘emphatic prominence’ is expressed. Emphasis occurs when a narrator draws attention to part of a text, either within the narration or within direct
speech in which case, the speaker is presented as the one who wishes to draw attention to a particular item. Each language has its own ways of emphasizing items within texts; in Digo, among the most
important are lexical expressions of emphasis including exclamations, discourse markers and
ideophones, specialized demonstrative forms, the ‘emphatic’ aspect marker henda-, the focus marker che, and repetition. The primary texts used in the analysis of emphasis are Text 6 Mchetu Siyerya Sima The
Woman who wouldn’t eat Ugali and Text 1 Mhegi wa Mihambo The Setter of Traps.
9.1 Lexical expressions of emphasis
Exclamations are expressions of surprise. The narrator may use exclamations to draw the hearer or reader’s attention to an important item in the narrative, as in 1.4a and 1.12 where the exclamation
Kumbavi is used to draw attention to important and unexpected events in the story see also 3.10. The exclamation kumbavi can also be used to indicate something which is newsworthy to one of the
participants in the story, but which is already known to the reader. That is, the narrator uses kumbavi to indicate the participant’s perspective on events. This is illustrated in 6.33b where the woman discovers
that the intestines of the animals that her husband had trapped had been eaten by a lion, and not—as she had suspected—by another woman. Similarly, in 2.19c kumbavi indicates the participants’ surprise at
discovering that the boy Mwiya was alive and not dead, as they had believed. Note also 1.35a, which contains the reduced form mbavi.
A participant may use an exclamation too in direct speech to express surprise. An example is kpwani which emphasizes a question the speaker is surprised about something as in 6.11b and 6.30b, where
kpwani is used to express the man’s surprise at finding his wife caught in his own trap, although it is part of his thoughts rather than an actual speech.
Other exclamations include mbona in 1.18d which expresses disbelief, hebu in 6.42b which is used to invite the addressee’s agreement, similar to English “Why not...?”, and ng’oo in 6.34a which expresses
the man’s total rejection of the idea that he should disembowel his wife and give her intestines to the lion.
Interjections are similar to exclamations, but are not really lexical expressions. They express emotion in very general terms. Examples are O in 1.6b and Aa in 1.35a.
Discourse markers are also similar to exclamations, but are less immediately emotional. They indicate that the information which they introduce is meant to be understood as expressing the speaker’s
perspective on the information which they introduce. In 1.7b and 1.18b the discourse marker amba is used in direct speech to indicate that the speaker in each case is attributing the truth of the following
statement to the other person, rather than guaranteeing it himself. In 6.43b, haya is used to signal that the speaker is satisfied with what has happened so far the woman has been released from the trap and is
sitting nearby, without attempting to flee before continuing with his instructions.
Digo also makes use of ideophones for emphasis. Ideophones normally mimic the sound of what they are describing, and are commonly used to describe the sounds of acting without care; e.g., animal
sounds, breaking, falling, quickness, water, etc., either together with or replacing a verb, noun, etc. which expresses the idea that they represent. They can also express ideas such as vivid colors,
completeness, finality, etc. In some Bantu languages, ideophones are introduced by quote markers, but since—as we saw in section 8—Digo does not use quote markers to introduce direct speech,
unsurprisingly ideophones in Digo occur without any introductory particles. In Text 1, the ideophones tse-tse-tse, bii, and kikiri kikiri occur:
1.8d
usiseme tse-tse-tse do not report anything at all, expressing completeness. 1.10d
Mdigo siye mutu bii a Digo isn’t a person at all, expressing a total absence of a quality. 1.16a
Kikiri kikiri ya madzi kuhekpwa, Glug glug of water being drawn, expressing the sound made by water being drawn from a well or stream.
9.2 Specialized demonstrative forms
