Colloquium
Procedural discourse in Sáliba: Two case studies
Dr. Jorge Rosés Labrada, Linguistics, 海角社区
Date: Friday, March 14, 2025
Time: 3:00 - 4:15pm MST
Place: SAB 3-36
Zoom link:
Meeting ID: 970 1685 3467
Passcode: 295120
The study of procedural texts has long yielded valuable insights into language structure. Based on a corpus of legacy recordings, this presentation examines the properties of procedural discourse in Sáliba (Colombia and Venezuela, Jodï-Sáliban, ISO: slc, Glottocode: sali1298), focusing in particular on the expression of sequentiality and on object omission. With respect to the encoding of sequential actions, I show that two different constructions are available to Sáliba speakers to express temporal adverbial clauses in procedural texts, one that relies on a subordinate (i.e. non-finite) verb form with an adverbial suffix -ana and one that has a finite verb form followed by a postposition ekwe ‘after’. For object omission, I show that object omission is closely tied to topic continuity and that overt expression of objects is, conversely, tied to the introduction of new topics. These two case studies not only contribute to our crosslinguistic understanding of sequentiality, object omission, and the structure of procedural discourse but also highlight the importance of connected discourse for language revitalization efforts.