| The African language of Bandi has little written about its grammar. This thesis analyzes discourse structure based on a folk tale, an historical narrative, and a procedural text. The data was gathered while working for The Institute for Liberian Languages in Liberia, West Africa.The model used is Stratificational Grammar as developed by Ilah Fleming. Included are formulas for lower level grammatical constructions and higher level text formulas. Also included are the salience schemes of the texts based on Robert Longacre's etic rank scheme.This study reveals a complex verbal system which plays a major role in revealing text structure and salience schemes. One salience scheme of eight bands is posited for both narratives and another scheme of three bands for the procedural text. Plot structure and referent rank determine the use of reported speech. Referents are ranked by their manner of introduction and their roles throughout a text. |
