Bridging Constructions
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Bridging constructions Edited by Valérie Guérin language Studies in Diversity Linguistics 24 science press Studies in Diversity Linguistics Editor: Martin Haspelmath In this series: 1. Handschuh, Corinna. A typology of marked-S languages. 2. Rießler, Michael. Adjective attribution. 3. Klamer, Marian (ed.). The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. 4. Berghäll, Liisa. A grammar of Mauwake (Papua New Guinea). 5. Wilbur, Joshua. A grammar of Pite Saami. 6. Dahl, Östen. Grammaticalization in the North: Noun phrase morphosyntax in Scandinavian vernaculars. 7. Schackow, Diana. A grammar of Yakkha. 8. Liljegren, Henrik. A grammar of Palula. 9. Shimelman, Aviva. A grammar of Yauyos Quechua. 10. Rudin, Catherine & Bryan James Gordon (eds.). Advances in the study of Siouan languages and linguistics. 11. Kluge, Angela. A grammar of Papuan Malay. 12. Kieviet, Paulus. A grammar of Rapa Nui. 13. Michaud, Alexis. Tone in Yongning Na: Lexical tones and morphotonology. 14. Enfield, N. J. (ed.). Dependencies in language: On the causal ontology of linguistic systems. 15. Gutman, Ariel. Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic. 16. Bisang, Walter & Andrej Malchukov (eds.). Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios. 17. Stenzel, Kristine & Bruna Franchetto (eds.). On this and other worlds: Voices from Amazonia. 18. Paggio, Patrizia and Albert Gatt (eds.). The languages of Malta. 19. Seržant, Ilja A. & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.). Diachrony of differential argument marking. 20. Hölzl, Andreas. A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond: An ecological perspective. 21. Riesberg, Sonja, Asako Shiohara & Atsuko Utsumi (eds.). Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages. 22. Döhler, Christian. A grammar of Komnzo. 23. Yakpo, Kofi. A Grammar of Pichi. 24. Guérin Valérie (ed.). Bridging constructions. ISSN: 2363-5568 Bridging constructions Edited by Valérie Guérin language science press Guérin, Valérie (ed.). 2019. Bridging constructions (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 24). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/216 © 2019, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Indexed in EBSCO ISBN: 978-3-96110-141-2 (Digital) 978-3-96110-142-9 (Hardcover) ISSN: 2363-5568 DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2563698 Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/216 Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=216 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Felix Anker, Sukanta Basu, Felix Kopecky, Sebastian Nordhoff Proofreading: Amir Ghorbanpour, Andreas Hölzl, Bev Erasmus, Eitan Grossman, Felix Anker, Grant Aiton, Ivica Jeđud, Jeroen van de Weijer, Lachlan Mackenzie, Nerida Jarkey, Stephen Jones, Valerie Guerin, Yvonne Treis Fonts: Libertinus Serif, Libertinus Math, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Language Science Press Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin, Germany langsci-press.org Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Contents Preface iii Acknowledgments ix 1 Bridging constructions in typological perspective Valérie Guérin & Grant Aiton 1 2 The poetics of recapitulative linkage in Matsigenka and mixed Matsigenka-Spanish myth narrations Nicholas Q. Emlen 45 3 Short, finite and one-sided bridges in Logoori Hannah Sarvasy 79 4 Bridging constructions in Tsezic languages Diana Forker & Felix Anker 99 5 Bridging constructions in narrative texts in White Hmong (Hmong-Mien) Nerida Jarkey 129 6 The form and function of bridging constructions in Eibela discourse Grant Aiton 157 7 Online and offline bridging constructions in Korowai Lourens de Vries 185 8 Recapitulative linkage in Mavea Valérie Guérin 207 9 Clause repetition as a tying technique in Greek conversation Angeliki Alvanoudi 239 Index 269 Preface This volume is partly the result of a two-day workshop entitled Bridging Linkage in Cross-linguistic Perspective organized at the Cairns Institute (James Cook Uni- versity, Australia), on 25–26 February 2015 by Valérie Guérin and Simon Over- all. Our intent at the time was two-fold: (i) to gather data from a variety of lan- guages that would enable us to draw cross-linguistic generalisations about the formal and functional characteristics of bridging constructions, and (ii) to try and delimit the range of constructions that can be subsumed under the term bridging construction. In particular, we found it important to try and separate out bridging constructions from repetition. We aimed to cast our net as widely as possible in order to get a broad picture of bridging constructions and their instantiation across languages. For the workshop, we selected nine genetically- unrelated languages: four languages spoken in South America; four languages of Oceania (Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu); and Greek. Some of the presentations are reproduced in this volume in their most recent versions. Other chapters were invited by the volume’s editor. In preparation for the workshop (and subsequently, for this volume), we circu- lated among the authors (i) a list of core features defining bridging constructions extracted from the literature, reproduced below; (ii) a series of questions to ad- dress, if relevant, when describing bridging constructions. They are reproduced in the Appendix of Chapter 1; (iii) and an earlier version of Chapter 1, the in- troductory chapter. We asked that each author use these notions as a starting point to isolate typical and atypical instances of bridging constructions in their language of study. Characteristic features of bridging constructions • Bridging constructions are composed of a reference clause and a bridging clause. – The bridging clause is a non-main clause. The dependency can be marked morphologically, syntactically, or prosodically. – Prototypically, the reference clause is a main clause. Preface – In the large majority of cases, the reference clause ends a discourse unit while the bridging clause appears at the beginning of a new dis- course unit. – The bridging clause recapitulates at least one clause in the preceding discourse unit. • There are three types of bridging constructions, differentiated by the con- tent of the bridging clause: – Recapitulative linkage: the bridging clause repeats the reference clause more-or-less verbatim. – Summary linkage: the bridging clause does not repeat the reference clause but anaphorically refers to it with a summarizing predicate as the bridging element (i.e., a demonstrative verb, a pro-verb, an auxil- iary, or a light verb). – Mixed linkage: both types of linkage may co-occur in a single in- stance of bridging, where the bridging clause contains the same lexi- cal verb as the reference clause in addition to a summarizing verb of the type typically found in summary linkage. • In a stretch of discourse, bridging constructions enable: – Information backgrounding – Referent tracking – Event sequentiality – Paragraph demarcation The chapters Chapter 1 takes a typological look at bridging constructions. After introducing the general concepts, Valérie Guérin and Grant Aiton review the three types of bridging constructions that are reported in the literature and in the current volume, and discuss the form and functions of bridging constructions across lan- guages. In Chapter 2, Nick Emlen analyses recapitulative linkage in Matsigenka, a Kam- pan (Arawak) language, and shows how these constructions have been borrowed in Spanish, but not in Quechua, in a trilingual community in Peru. This chapter iv was presented in parts at Red Europea para el Estudio de las Lenguas Andinas (REELA), Leiden, September 2015. Hannah Sarvasy presents bridging constructions in the Bantu language Lo- goori in Chapter 3. She argues that these constructions are rarely use in Logoori discourse, restricted to procedural texts, and as stylistic features, their presence in a text is highly dependent on the penchant of the speaker. Diana Forker and Felix Anker examine bridging constructions in the Nakh- Daghestanian language family in Chapter 4. They show that recapitulative and summary linkages both occur in narratives in the Tsezic language group, and sug- gest that recapitulative linkage can be found throughout the Nakh-Daghestanian language family. Forker and Anker additionally observe a regular shift in deixis between the reference clause and bridging clause, which results in a regular sub- stitution of an andative verb of motion for an equivalent venitive verb. In Chapter 5, Nerida Jarkey reveals that in White Hmong recapitulative link- age is more common than summary linkage which is only found in first person narratives. The functions of these constructions are illustrated in the light of three text genres. Chapter 6 by Grant Aiton describes bridging constructions in Eibela, a lan- guage of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. Features of interest in Eibela include three types of summary linkage and discourse preferences relat- ing summary linkage to paragraphs and recapitulative linkage to episodes. Parts of this chapter were published in the journal Language and Linguistics in Melane- sia in 2015. In Chapter 7, Lourens de Vries details bridging constructions in Korowai, a Greater Awyu language of West Papua. Summary and recapitulative linkages are described in the wider context of clausal chains, their subtypes and functions clearly spelled out (whether they are marked or unmarked, carrying switch ref- erence marking or not, indicating thematic continuity