Bridging constructions in Hamar discourse

Abstract

This paper deals with bridging constructions in Hamar, a South Omotic language spoken in Southwest Ethiopia. Bridging constructions are stylistic devices and discourse linkage strategies consisting of sequences of two clauses which mark the end and the beginning of a discourse unit. Commonly known under the label ‘tail-head linkage’, bridging constructions are usually reported for polysynthetic languages of Papua New Guinea and Amazonian languages, but they are widespread also on the African continent; in the African linguistics tradition they are discussed in relation to phenomena such as clause chaining, converbs and switch reference. The three types of linkage strategies attested cross-linguistically (Guérin and Aiton 2018) are very common in Hamar discourse: the recapitulative linkage type (or tail-head), in which the lexical predicate of the preceding clause is repeated in the form of a converb or subordinate verb form; the summary linkage type, which involves the light verbs hayá ‘to do’ and hamá ‘to express’, depending on the (in)transitivity of the summarized event; and the mixed linkage type, which combines features of the two main types. The three constructions play an important role in structuring Hamar discourse, and they are associated with various functions including backgrounding events, marking a transitional point between episodes in a story or marking conversational turns, keeping track of the main event line and recapitulating quotation events.