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Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 36:2 (2021) ► pp.264–297

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The discourse marker ale in Bislama oral narratives

 | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
 | James Cook University, Australia
Published online: 14 January 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00076.alv
Abstract
This study takes us to the South Pacific and concentrates on Bislama, one of the dialects of Melanesian pidgin (Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 4) and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. We take a discourse analysis perspective to map out the functions of ale, a conspicuous discourse marker in conversations and narratives. Using Labov, William & Joshua Waletzky. 1967. Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In June Helm (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society, 12–44. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar model, we analyze the use of ale in narratives from the book Big Wok: Storian blong Wol Wo Tu long Vanuatu (Lindstrom, Lamont & James Gwero (eds.). 1998. Big Wok: Storian blong Wol Wo Tu long Vanuatu. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific; Christchurch: Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and determine that ale is a discourse marker which indicates temporal sequence and consequence, frames speech reports and closes a digression. We conclude our study by considering a possible historical development of ale. We map out how French allez could have become Bislama ale using imposition and functional transfer (Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2013a. Substrate influence and universals in the emergence of contact Englishes: Re-evaluating the evidence. In Daniel Schreier & Marianne Hundt (eds.), English as a contact language, 222–241. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) of vernacular discourse markers (such as go in Nguna).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Discourse markers: A roadmap
  • 2.Data and methods
    • 2.1The corpus, the cohort
    • 2.2The method
    • 2.3Bislama in a nutshell
  • 3.Ale in spoken Bislama
    • 3.1Prosodic properties of ale
    • 3.2Functions of the connective ale
    • 3.3More than a simple connective
      • 3.3.1Framing ale
      • 3.3.2Resumptive ale
    • 3.4Interim summary
  • 4.Allez! and Ale
    • 4.1Allez!
    • 4.2Ale as ‘encouragement to act’
    • 4.3From allez to ale
    • 4.4Imposition
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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Cited by one other publication

Alvanoudi, Angeliki
2022. Review of Heine, Kaltenböck, Kuteva & Long (2021): The Rise of Discourse Markers. Journal of Historical Linguistics 12:3 ► pp. 504 ff. DOI logo

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