Date of Award

12-2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Linguistics

First Advisor

S. H. Levinsohn

Abstract

This thesis is based on a collection of narratives told by Gujar women in northern Pakistan. It majors on the structure of subordinate clauses, the discourse functions of relative clauses and conjunctive participial clauses, and the function of the most common connectives: tɛ, fir, bas and ǰī.

The position of the relative pronoun indicates whether a relative clause is referring to an activated or a new participant. Relative clauses that appear superfluous indicate that the referent has a significant role to play in the subsequent discourse.

Conjunctive participial clauses may convey information of the same storyline status as the main verb in the sentence.

Sentences are normally joined with a connective. The most common connective, coordinative tɛ, joins equal constituents when they convey distinct information. Juxtaposition indicates that adjacent sentences do not convey distinct information. Correlative tɛ and contrastive tɛ, as spacers, separate constituents of unequal status and indicating their relation to the context. Correlative tɛ switches the attention to a new time or participant, and contrastive tɛ indicates a proposition counter to expectation.

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