ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Studia Iranica Upsaliensia 15 Discourse Features in Balochi of Sistan (Oral Narratives) Revised Version BEHROOZ BARJASTEH DELFOROOZ Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Ihresalen (21-0011), Engelska Parken, Thunbergsvägen 3, Uppsala, Saturday, October 2, 2010 at 10:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Abstract Barjasteh Delforooz, B. 2010. Discourse Features in Balochi of Sistan (Oral Narratives). Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Iranica Upsaliensia 15. 398 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-554- 7870-4 This work presents a first study of discourse features in Balochi narratives of Sistan. Dis- course analysis investigates what are the properties that make for well-formed texts in a lan- guage. There are many approaches to discourse analysis and most approaches focus on a particular aspect of text formation. The approach to text linguistics or discourse analysis taken in this work is based on Dooley and Levinsohn’s Analyzing Discourse: A manual of basic concepts (2001). Their methodology has been refined over years of practical use and, among diverse methodologies; they follow a functional and cognitive approach. In this dissertation, Roberts’ (2009) application of Dooley and Levinsohn’s methodology to Persian is followed in the study of our Sistani Balochi text corpus. In chapters 2-7 this approach is applied to Balochi narrative texts. Chapter two introduces the reader to the discourse-pragmatic structuring of sentences in BS and chapter three shows how different syntactic devices can distinguish foreground and background information in BS oral texts. In chapter four we study the deixis of time and place and how the concept of prox- imal and distal deixis applies across a range of deictic elements. Chapter five examines some basic connectives and how they link propositions in the discourse context, and in chapter six represented speech is studied. Chapter seven illustrates how different participants are intro- duced into a discourse and how their activation status is signalled throughout the discourse. Appendix 1 contains details of the Balochi text-corpus used, and Appendix 2 contains in- terlinearized versions of ten of the main texts used in the study. A CD with nine audio files and one video file of the ten texts from Appendix 2, plus one extra video file, is also included. Keywords: Balochi, discourse studies, oral narratives, text linguistics, information structure, syntax, descriptive linguistics, fieldwork, Iranian languages Behrooz Barjasteh Delforooz, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Box 635, Uppsala University, SE-75126 Uppsala, Sweden © Behrooz Barjasteh Delforooz 2010 ISSN 1100-326X ISBN 978-91-554-7870-4 urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-129832 (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-129832) Printed in Sweden by Edita Västra Aros, Västerås 2010. In memory of H. S. Nyberg (1889-1974) and to my wife, Eliza and my children, Gazaleh, Kourosh, and Taraneh “Honor the Baloch” PAUL TITUS (1998) Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 13 Abbreviations ................................................................................................ 15 1. Introduction ......................................................................................... 17 1.1 A historical survey of the Baloch of Sistan ..................................... 17 1.2 The Balochi language ...................................................................... 19 1.2.1 The position of Balochi among Iranian languages ................ 19 1.2.2 Balochi dialects ...................................................................... 20 1.2.3 The number of Balochi speakers ........................................... 21 1.3 Previous research on the Balochi of Sistan ..................................... 22 1.4 Purpose of the study ........................................................................ 23 1.5 Theoretical remarks......................................................................... 24 1.6 Material ........................................................................................... 25 1.7 Layout of the study ......................................................................... 28 2. Discourse-Pragmatic Structuring of Sentences.................................... 29 2.1 Sentence articulation ....................................................................... 32 2.1.1 Topic-comment articulation ................................................... 32 2.1.2 Focus-presupposition articulation .......................................... 33 2.1.3 Thetic sentences ..................................................................... 35 2.2 Left-dislocated elements and points of departure ........................... 37 2.2.1 Preposing of adverbial elements ............................................ 38 2.2.1.1 Temporal points of departure ..................................... 39 2.2.1.2 Spatial points of departure .......................................... 45 2.2.1.3 Referential points of departure ................................... 45 2.2.1.4 Points of departure by renewal (echo) ........................ 47 2.2.1.5 Other situational points of departure .......................... 48 2.2.2 Vocatives ............................................................................... 51 2.2.3 Short replies ........................................................................... 51 2.2.4 Exclamations .......................................................................... 52 2.3 Right-dislocated elements and other post-verbal constituents ........ 52 2.3.1 Vocatives ............................................................................... 52 2.3.2 Tails ....................................................................................... 53 2.3.3 Adverbials .............................................................................. 54 2.3.4 Preverbal and postverbal relative clauses .............................. 55 2.3.5 Purpose clause ....................................................................... 56 2.4 Order of constituents in the clause .................................................. 58 2.4.1 Verbal-predicates ................................................................... 59 2.4.1.1 Intransitive predicates ................................................. 59 2.4.1.2 Transitive predicates ................................................... 62 2.4.1.3 Ditransitive predicates ................................................ 62 2.4.1.4 Predicative copula ...................................................... 64 2.4.2 Non-verbal predicates ............................................................ 65 2.4.3 Marked order of constituents in the clause ............................ 65 2.4.3.1 Postposed subject ........................................................ 66 2.4.3.2 Postposed object ......................................................... 66 2.4.3.3 Preposed object ........................................................... 68 2.5 Summary ......................................................................................... 71 3. The Relative Informational Prominence of the Sentences of a Text ... 73 3.1 Foreground and background ........................................................... 73 3.1.1 Events and non-events .............................................................. 76 3.1.2 Signals of kinds of information ................................................ 77 3.1.3 Natural prominence and the verb .............................................. 77 3.1.3.1 Verb types and natural prominence .................................... 77 3.1.3.2 Verbal aspect and background versus foreground ............. 78 3.2 Foreground and background in BS narrative .................................. 79 3.2.1 The BS verb system .................................................................. 79 3.2.2 Non-event information in BS narratives ................................... 82 3.2.3 Subordinate clauses in BS narratives ........................................ 89 3.2.4 Verb types in BS narratives ...................................................... 91 3.2.5 Tense and aspect in BS narratives ............................................ 94 3.2.6 Application to XM and PJ texts .............................................. 108 3.3 Highlighting of sentences .............................................................. 113 3.4 Summary ....................................................................................... 122 4. Deixis ................................................................................................. 123 4.1 Proximal and distal deixis ............................................................. 123 4.2 Time deixis .................................................................................... 124 4.2.1 The general time deictic nūn/annūn ..................................... 124 4.2.2 The specific time deictics mrōčī, bāndā, pōšī and zī ........... 131 4.3 Place deixis and motion verbs ....................................................... 138 4.4 Motion verbs and prospective aspect ............................................ 148 4.5 The demonstratives ē/ēš ‘this’ and ā ‘that’ and discourse deixis .. 150 4.5.1 The functions of ē ‘this’ ....................................................... 151 4.5.1.1 Objective reference ..................................................