Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1995 Text and Context of the Suwo': Bribri Oral Tradition. Carla Victoria Jara Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Jara, Carla Victoria, "Text and Context of the Suwo': Bribri Oral Tradition." (1995). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6022. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6022 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TEXT AND CONTEXT OF THE SUWO': BRIBRI ORAL TRADITION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics by Carla Victoria Jara B.A., Universidad de Costa Rica, 1985 M.A., Universidad de Costa Rica, 1987 August 1995 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DMI Number: 9609096 UMI Microform 9609096 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To Eladio and Maria Helena, friends forever. To Eduardo, Eduardo Jr. and Castalia, lovingly. To the Bribri people, and their endless struggle. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Dr. Jill Brody: Without her wisdom and support this dissertation would not have been possible. Thanks to Dr. Hugh Buckingham and Dr. Lyle Campbell, teachers and friends. I am also grateful to Dr. Janna Oetting and Dr.Kurt Goblirsch for having agreed to be members of my committee. Special thanks to Ali Garcia-Segura, more than a consultant along all these years. And to late Awa Francisco Garcia, to whom I owe my knowledge of the fascinating Bribri world. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................... iii LIST OF TABLES .......................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES .......................................... vii ABSTRACT .................................................. viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................... 1 1.1 Goal and Organization .................... 1 1.2 The Bribris and Their Language ........... 5 1.3 Data Base of the S t u d y ................... 17 1.4 Previous Research ...................... 25 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ......................... 27 2.1 Background on Functionalism and Text Linguistics .............................. 27 2.2 Hallidayian Definition of Te x t .......... 30 2.3 Context of Situation: Field, Tenor and M o d e ..................................... 32 2.4 S t r u c t u r e ................................ 35 2.5 T e x t u r e .................................. 3 8 2.6 Grimes' Subsystems of Language ........ 47 2.7 Levels of Organization in Discourse . 51 2.8 S u m m a r y .................................. 59 3 ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEMS OF CONTENT AND COHESION ....................................... 61 3.1 Preliminaries ............................61 3.2 C o n t e n t .................................. 62 3.3 C o h e s i o n .................................. 91 4 ANALYSIS OF CONTEXT OF DISCOURSE AND GENERIC STRUCTURE ...................................... 107 4.1 Preliminaries ...........................107 4.2 Characterization of Field, Tenor and Mode of Context .........................107 4.3 Structure of Text 1 .................... 116 4.4 Structure of the Additional Texts of the Data B a s e ........................... 121 4.5 Contextual Configuration ............. 126 4.6 Genre and "Voices" in the Suwo' . 127 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ....................... 135 5.1 Summary ..................................135 5.2 The Suwo' within the Bribri System of B e l i e f s ..................................143 NOTES ..................................................... 147 REFERENCES ................................................. 152 APPENDIXES A TEXT 1: MIKA SIBO TSAKINE 'WHEN SIBO WAS BORN' .......................................... 157 B ADDITIONAL BRIBRI TEXTS ..................... 190 C LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................... 275 VITA ........................................................277 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF TABLES 1. Phonological Differences among Bribri Dialects . 15 2. Phonetic Differences among Bribri Dialects ........ 16 3. Levels and Units of Analysis ...................... 59 4. Constituents of the Bribri C l a u s e ................ 63 5. Number of Clauses with Overt Constituents ....... 66 6. Constituency of VERB-Clause Types ................. 67 7. Propositions Encoded in Clauses 21-27, Text 1 . 69 8. List of Participants and Number of Mentions.... 71 9. Worlds of Discourse in Text 1 .................... 94 vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES 1. Dissertation's Organization ......................... 4 2. The Intermediate A r e a ........................... 6 3. Bribri Graphemes and Their Equivalencies in IPA . 13 4. Dialectal Distribution of Bribri Communities . 18 5. General Framework for the Anal y s i s .............. 32 6. Relationships among Linguistic Levels .............. 60 7. Relationships between Sibo's and Chanters' Worlds . 145 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This dissertation comprises the analysis of six extensive texts in Bribri, a Chibchan language spoken in Costa Rica, Central America. The theoretical framework is based mainly on M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan's social- semiotic perspective of text analysis and on Joseph Grimes' analysis of discourse. In order to characterize this genre within its context of discourse, the three components of context, i.e., field, tenor and mode, have been defined for the corpus of texts. To determine how texture and structure, the basic unities of text, are displayed, one text is analyzed in detail and the results are compared with the other texts of the data base. Texture has been analyzed in terms of the cohesive strategies used by the speaker throughout the texts. Structure has been determined as a continuum from maximal completeness to minimal completeness where the texts are located, according to the structural elements present in each of them. The result of the analysis is the description of a genre, the suwo', where three kinds of discourse interrelate with each other, namely narrative, descriptive and chanted. Narrative discourse is used in the transmission of participants and events involved in Sibo's (the god) world. viii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Descriptive discourse is used in the description of events and participants involved in the chanters' world, which represent the Bribris' actual world. Chanted discourse, i.e. ritual speech, expresses the connecting thread between the two worlds of discourse involved in the suwo'. The definition of this type of discourse as a genre is preliminary based on Hasan's notion of "contextual configuration" and then re-evaluated at the light of Richard Bauman's concept of "traditionalization". The genre is finally characterized as the expression of the Bribri system of beliefs. The six analyzed texts are rendered in their original versions with morphemic glosses and English translations. ix Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Goal and Organization E' ro ioio "This was before", says the Bribri shaman Francisco Garcia, "when these traditions were left to us, when we still celebrated our funerals. When little children died, that was celebrated. Then the elders used to sing: aa rtsdlala, rtso kue i tte keree, keree, 666, aa bimale, rtso kue i aa, keree, keree, ooo.. The oral tradition in Bribri, a language of Chibchan affiliation, is disappearing. Collecting and rendering permanent its texts and chants will help to preserve an important element of the endangered Bribri culture. The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the task of preservation by analyzing six extensive texts from the Bribri oral tradition. In addition to documenting the contents of the texts, their structure is analyzed from a functional perspective, thus contributing at the same time to the field of functional syntax and text analysis, within the realm of linguistics. I will work with a particular variety of Bribri oral tradition, the suwo', where three different kinds of 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction