This paper proposes a discourse-based approach to the language documentation of local ecological knowledge (LEK). The knowledge, skills, beliefs, cultural worldviews, and ideologies that shape the way a community interacts with its environment can be examined through the discourse in which LEK emerges. 'Discourse-based' refers to two components:…

This study examines the manifestations of purity and authenticity in 47 Basque bilinguals' reactions to code-switching. The respondents listened to two speech extracts with code-switching, filled in a short questionnaire and talked about the extracts in small groups. These conversations were then recorded. The respondents' beliefs can be…

Like many other languages, Hualapai employs the reflexive suffix for several different grammatical purposes. Unlike those languages, however, constructions with a reflexive marker in Hualapai are usually not ambiguous with respect to the expected meanings. This paper identifies four functions that the reflexive suffix may have: reflexive,…

Replicates and examines the methodology of Pamela Fisherman's study of Brazilian Portuguese speakers, "Interactions: The Work Women Do." The present study further develops the treatment of question forms and finds that not all have a function in developing and maintaining discourse. Few similarities were found in the results of the two…

This collection contains five papers on discourse in a variety of languages. "A Stratificational Perspective on the Discourse Structure of Limos Kalinga" by Hartmut Wiens demonstrates the value of the stratificational model in looking at language in relatively small portions at various levels while also showing how its structural aspects…

This analysis of repeated utterances in Japanese conversational discourse focuses on repetition as an expression of iconicity. In the analysis of a 30-minute conversation among 4 Japanese speakers, the iconic meanings expressed by both reduplication and conversational repetition are highlighted. The iconicity characteristic of conversational data…

Provides an overview of the topic of this special issue of the journal--discourse markers in bilingual conversation. Introduces the studies included in the issue, which investigate discourse markers in bilingual conversation from a variety of perspectives. As a whole the articles document the phenomenon of language alternation at discourse markers…

The status of text/discourse research in South Africa is analyzed. The discussion begins with some background information on the nature of discourse research, and proceeds to an overview of the whole field of discourse research in that country and then a look at research on Afrikaans discourse. Both general trends and specific areas of research…

The word order in Klamath, a Penutian language of southern Oregon, has been described as almost completely "free". The language is examined in terms of the effect of the relative topicality of arguments on their position preceding or following the verb. The database used for this study consisted of seven Klamath texts from Barker (1963):…

An analysis of Hebrew topicalization looks at the normal or unmarked function of topicalization in narrative discourse and considers the additional contextual effects that marked or apparently redundant instances of topicalization are intended to achieve. Focus is on the fronting of elements in sentences with topic-comment articulation. It is…

Investigates the pragmatic functions of topicalizing subject (S) and object (O) in Standard Arabic and attempts to find a functional explanation for the occasional preposing/topicalization of S and/or O over the verb (V) to yield a construction in the form of SVO order or any other order sanctioned by the rules of Arabic grammar. (22 references)…

This study presents evidence collected from basilectal texts that the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) mental predicates "think, know, want, feel, say, see, hear" have clear lexical equivalents in Hawaii Creole English (HCE), and that these HCE predicates occur, with minor qualification, in the syntactic configurations predicted by…

A discussion of Hungarian spoken discourse focuses on the role of two pragmatic connectives, "hat" ("well, so (after all)") and "mert" ("because"). Introductory sections discuss the classification of utterance-types as a prerequisite to analyzing discourse and the utterance-type as defined by pragmatic…

A study investigated the way given and new information is conveyed in Korean discourse by applying a taxonomy of given-new information, based on English discourse, to Korean. The taxonomy presumes that information packaging in natural language reflects sender's hypotheses about receiver's assumptions, beliefs, and strategies. Two types of Korean…

This study examines the object case markings "o" and "ga" in Japanese with respect to the degree of predictability. A speaker who assumes that the listener will have difficulty identifying the referent, tends to use a construction type that enables the listener to uniquely identify the referent. This notion of predictability is…