Types of narrative texts

1 A note on the texts This account of the narrative discourse features of Suba-Simbiti uses a number of narrative texts as its corpus. A total of eight oral texts were used, provided by four authors and used with their permission. The texts were lightly edited by a Simbiti translator to remove false starts and other performance errors, but features that are particular to the medium such as repetitions and longer sentences have been retained. All of the examples used in this paper are taken from these texts and are referred to using an abbreviated title such as “Inheritance,” “Water,” etc., followed by the sentence number. If a sentence contains more than one clause, letters are used, so example Inheritance 6b is taken from the text titled “Inheritance,” sentence 6, clause b. The abbreviations listed in Table 1 are instances where the author has deviated from Leipzig glossing rules. All other glosses appearing in this paper are used in accordance with these rules. Table 1. Abbreviations Label Description Label Description 1–18 noun class 1–18 POC focal marker ADD additive pronoun FV final vowel ASS associative HAB habitual aspect marker ANT anterior INF infinitive APPL applicative LOC locative CAUS causative NARR narrative tense COMP complementizer NEG negative CONT continuous PL plural COP copula POSS possessive DEM _ DIST distal demonstrative PST past tense prefix DEM _ PROX proximal demonstrative PROX proximal past tense prefix DEM _ REF referential demonstrative REL relative marker EMPH emphatic SG singular EXCL exclamation SBJ subjunctive 1 Constituent elements of narrative texts The following section examines the constituent elements of narrative texts.

1.1 Types of narrative texts

The events in two of the texts took place in the lifetime of the teller “Crocodile” and “Mgendi” and two others took place in the past “Origin” and “Simbiti People”. The text “Birds” is fictional; however, it is unclear whether the remaining three texts “Water,” “Buffalo” and “Inheritance” should be categorized as fiction or nonfiction. All stories are told from the third person perspective. Table 2 provides a short summary of each narrative in the corpus. Table 2. Summaries of the texts Text Summary Crocodile A man goes fishing with his companions and is bitten by a crocodile. When he seeks help from his companions, they abandon him. He is able to pull himself back into the boat as people from the shore come to help him. Origin The narrator describes the origin of the Simbiti people by giving a brief history of the life of Msimbiti. The story begins as Msimbiti leaves his brother and crosses a lake to new land where he meets Iryenyi. Iryenyi offers one of his daughters as a wife for Msimbiti, and the family that they create becomes the first of the Simbiti people. Simbiti People This narrative follows the same story line as “Origin” but is told by a different narrator. Mgendi Mgendi and his friends go fishing and get stranded in the water when their boat sinks. Two of the fishermen, who are good swimmers, decide to swim to shore, leaving the other fishermen waiting in the water until they return with help. One of those left behind despairs and decides to drown himself. The others who remained at the boat are rescued by another boat, and the two who swam for shore are never heard from again. Water A man sends his two wives to fetch water from the Moseero well, which is very far away. One of the wives, who is loved by her husband, fetches water from a different well and deceives her husband. The other wife, who is not loved, goes to the Moseero well and fetches the water that her husband requested. Buffalo A young man takes his family’s cattle out to graze when a buffalo comes and kills one of them. He returns home to tell his father what had happened, and his father is very disappointed that he did not kill the buffalo. The young man returns to the field and kills the buffalo, making his father very proud. Inheritance A father who has two sons gets sick and dies. His wealth is divided among the sons. One son, who is loved more than the other son, is disappointed to find that his only inheritance is his father’s Bible. Then, one day he discovers a check that is worth more money than all his fathers other possessions combined has been hidden in the Bible. Birds A folktale about men who send different groups of people to fetch water for them. Each group of people encounters extraordinarily large birds along the way, which distract them from their journey. Of these eight narratives, seven can be described as climactic, in which there is a problem or conflict that is resolved at the peak of the story. Table 3 classifies each text as either climactic or episodic and provides a brief summary of the climax for the climactic texts. Table 3. Climactic and episodic texts Text Type Summary of climax Crocodile climactic A man is bitten by a crocodile while wading through water. Origin climactic Msimbiti marries one of Iryenyi’s daughters. Mgendi climactic One of Mgendi’s companions decides to commit suicide. Water climactic A husband realizes that one of his wives has deceived him. Buffalo climactic A young man hunts and kills the buffalo that killed one of his cows. Inheritance climactic A son finds a bank check inside a Bible, which is his inheritance from his father. Birds climactic Elderly men go to fetch water and are distracted by large, singing birds. When they return home, they find all their possessions has been stolen. Simbiti People episodic none

1.2 Structure of narrative texts