Graduation Semester and Year

1986

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics

Department

Linguistics

First Advisor

Unknown

Abstract

This study presents the interrelated concerns of Thai narrative discourse which include macrostructure, texture, constituent structure, and cultural information. The macrostructure is the global meaning of a discourse which is derived via the basic principles of macro-processing. A specific Thai narrative text is analyzed to illustrate how to derive a macrostructure via these principles and how the derived macrostructure can be considered to be a control on the content and balance of the story. The profile of narrative discourse is a kind of texture which is a manifestation of the macrostructure. The profile is studied in relation to plot as the notional structure. Thai paragraphs which expound the surface constituents of the narrative are classified into nineteen types. To develop the plot structure, a storyline is necessary for the text to move forward from the starting point toward the end. The storyline and non-storyline, as a kind of texture, are discussed. The storyline consists of four categories of on-the-line verbs, i.e, cognitive experience, event proper, motion, and action. The non-storyline includes cohesion, author's evaluation, irrealis, setting, flashback, cognitive state, and background activities. Eventually, a salience scheme of verb forms/clause types is posited. Participant reference is another kind of texture. The storyline requires the noun phrases which refer to participants. Participants are ranked into main, secondary, and tertiary. The main participant is the global thematic participant of the story and mostly represented by a zero anaphor except when there is any kind of text discontinuity. Secondary participant is locally thematic participant who is less frequently represented by a zero anaphor. Tertiary participant may be occasionally set up as locally thematic participant and he is mostly represented by an overt form. The final concern of this study is the role of cultural information. A trickster tale is analyzed to illustrate how this information is necessarily supplied by the hearer/reader if he is to understand the text. Knowledge frames which are necessary for the hearer/reader to understand the trickster tale are further discussed.

Keywords

Language, Literature and linguistics

Disciplines

Linguistics | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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