7.2.3 Relative clauses describing participants
Non-restrictive relative clauses, which describe participants, are rarer than restrictive relative clauses, which identify participants, but they do occur. In 2.2 Mwiya’s father is described using a relative clause
which starts in 2.2b and continues to the end of 2.2e:
2.2b amba-ye kala a=na
ng’ombe nyinji sana...
REL
-1.
REL PST
3
SG
=
COM
10.cows 10.many very ‘who had very many cows...’
7.2.4 Relative clauses in identificational sentence articulation
In Text 2, two relative clauses occur in quick succession as part of identificational sentence articulations. The first occurs in 2.31b, at the end of the peak episode, where the elder wife is identified as the person
who had buried Mwiya in a pit. The second relative clause in 2.32a identifies the people at the start of the following paragraph and episode the denouement:
2.31b iye ndi=ye
a-ri-ye-hend-a mambo
higa 3
SG COP
=1.
REF
3
SG
-
PST
-1.
REL
-do-
FV
6.things 6.
DEM
_
PROX
‘it was her who did those things’ 2.32a Hinyo
atu a-ri-o-kal-a
a-k-edz-a phara
2.
DEM
_
NP
2.people 3
PL
-
PST
-2.
REL
-be-
FV
3
PL
-
ANT
-come-
FV
16.
DEM
_
DIST
‘Those people who had come there’ In Text 4, a relative clause occurs as part of identificational sentence articulation in the denouement
where the fate of the stubborn man is summarized: 4.29
hiro ndi=ro
ro-m-phah-a mutu
wa kani
5.
DEM
_
DIST COP
=5.
REF
5.
REL
-3
SG
-get-
FV
1.person 1.
ASS
stubbornness ‘this is what happened to the stubborn man’
8 Reported speech
Digo narratives vary in the amount of direct and indirect speech that they contain. In our corpus, Texts 1, 5, 6 and 7 contain far more direct speech than indirect speech. In these texts, direct speech is used not
only to report conversations but also to report the inner thoughts of a participant either as ‘inner monologues’ or as participants speaking aloud to themselves. Texts 2, 3 and 4 contain hardly any direct
speech. We will look in detail at Text 6 as an example of a narrative with predominantly direct speech, and Texts 2 and 3 as examples of narratives with more indirect speech.
8.1 Functions of direct and indirect speech: foreground and background
Kategori