Final assignment LNGS3701 2023…

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Final assignment (due Wednesday June 14, by 9am sharp) 50%;
  
You should submit your assignment through Canvas as a single Word doc or pdf, including all analysis tables etc. as
appendices (other types of submission will not be accepted).

The following slides provide scaffolding for your essay.

Notes:
 
Work not submitted on or before the due date is subject to a penalty of 5% per calendar day late (including weekends
and public holidays). If work is submitted more than 10 days after the due date, or is submitted after the return date,
the mark will be 0.
The text we are dealing with here is called 'Growing up in Davao' (Paglaki sa
Davao in Tagalog), by Cynthia Lumbera (2009: 145). In this bilingual text
Lumbera reflects on her memories of growing up in Mindanao and explains
what she didn't understand as a child about the dispossession of Indigenous
people there. It is part of a bilingual social science book called Regional
Profiles: people and places (Almario et al. 2009), which has been designed to
introduce Philippines school students to the geography, environment, history,
industry, people and culture of their country and is taken from the 'Mindanao
and the Archipelago of Sulu' section of the book. Lumbera focuses our
attention on the position of the Philippines communities whose land has been
expropriated by settlers, corporations and government and whose culture and
language are thereby marginalised and threatened with extinction. A screen
shot of the bilingual text is presented on the next slide; and a typescript of the
English text follows (slightly adapted).
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 GROWING UP IN DAVAO
by Cynthia Lumbera
 
When I was a young girl growing up in my Lola's house in Davao in the mid 1950s, there used to come every Christmastime a Bagobo
woman who would just sit huddled for hours on top of the stairs. I was very much afraid of her then–I thought she was a witch, for she was
small and old, with sharp piercing eyes, blackened teeth, and rough, splayed feet. She carried a dirty native knapsack, in which she stuffed
old clothes, plastic containers, discarded plates and saucers, and old spoons, forks, and knives. But she was dressed handsomely! Though
tattered and worn, her dress, made of abaca fibre, was decorated with embroidery, shell disks, and beads. She had ornaments of brass and
shells on her arms; and around her ankles she wore beads, bells, and shells.
 
She came every year, and then one day, she stopped coming. I asked my Lola where the old Bagaobo woman was, and my Lola waved her
hand indifferently: “Gosh Cindy, I don't know... probably already gone somewhere." I asked my uncle, and he said that the Bagobo woman
was the wife of a former Lumad chief, now tenants in my Lola's farm.
 
Growing up in Davao in the mid-1950s was growing up blissfully ignorant of the conflicts and tensions in a settler town carved out of the
wilderness by Spanish friars and conquistadors; integrated into the world capitalist market by American and Japanese plantation owners;
and increasingly peopled by Christian settlers coming from all parts of the country, in search of better luck in the "land of promise".
Although the language of the old families remained "Dinabaw" (a Mandaya-based dialect), this was fast disappearing, as settlers from all
over the country trying to find a common language of communication had given birth to a peculiar "bastardized" Tagalog, heavily laced by
Bisayan-Cebuano words and linguistic peculiarities.
 
The Muslims and Lumads were displaced and marginalized by conquest, and through the years had been systematically deprived of their
ancestral lands by government laws and left out of economic progress by the expansion of multinational agribusinesses. The Lumads
moved farther into the forests and hinterlands; and the Muslims moved to places where there were stronger Muslim settlements, like
Cotabato, Sulu, and Zamboanga. In Davao, a bustling settlement town and then declared a city in 1936, the Muslims and Lumads, original
settlers of Mindinao land, became to most people just shadowy creatures, mysterious and fearsome, hovering in the fringes of our safe
Christian community.
 
Insulated, raised in prejudice and distrust, and even a sense of arrogant entitlement to the land, we "settler' children", had no realization of
the displacement and alienation of Lumads and Muslims. We did not have the eyes to see the Muslims and Lumads in the light of an
oppressive political, economic, and cultural system that continues to this day.
 
That's why we never bothered with the old Bagobo woman who huddled on the stairs of my Lola's house.

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The graphology of this text presents us with a title and six paragraphs. The title,
Growing up in Davao, seems to be predicting some kind of autobiographical
text. And this is indeed reflected in paragraphs 1 and 2, which tell a story from
Lumbera's childhood about an old Bagobo woman who used to visit her
grandmother's house at Christmas time, but one day didn't come. Paragraph and
6 returns to these events, but in a rather contradictory way – suggesting that
because of their upbringing Lumbera and settler children like her never paid any
attention to the Lumad and Muslim people around their homes. But paragraphs 1
and 2 deal explicitly with events etched in Lumbera's memory, showing she did
pay attention, at least some of the time. And the text's single illustration in a
sense confirms this through a drawing of two children peeping over a window
sill at a woman in Indigenous clothing sitting on the stairs of a small traditional
stilt house (bahay kubo).
 
Paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 on the other hand are more historical than
autobiographical. They deal with the colonisation of Mindanao by successive
waves of outsiders and the resulting displacement of its Indigenous peoples –
and so are less clearly predicted by the title of the text and less directly related to
its illustration.

The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the story and the history
phases of this text, showing how the grammar constructs its story (pars 1, 2, 6)
and its history (pars 3, 4, 5). We are doing this analysis to explore what our
grammar can tell us about the meaning of the text.
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1. As a first step, divide the text into ranking clauses and measure the
lexical density of pars 1,2,6 (as a group) vs pars 3,4,5 (as a group) by
noting the average number of lexical items per ranking clause.

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In linguistics, a closed class (or closed word class) is a word class to which no
new items can normally be added, and that usually contains a relatively small
number of items. Typical closed classes found in many languages are
adpositions (prepositions and postpositions), determiners, conjunctions, and
pronouns. These are also referred to as function words (or grammatical
items).

Contrastingly, an open class offers possibilities for expansion. Typical open

classes such as nouns and verbs can and do get new words often, through the
usual means such as compounding, derivation, coining, borrowing, etc. These
are also referred to as content words (or lexical items).

closed class/open class

function word/content word
grammatical item/lexical item

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The following is a list of the kind of words generally considered in
English to be closed class/function words:

determiners – the and a

pronouns – he/him, she/her...

prepositions – in, at...

conjunctions – after, because...

auxiliary verbs – has, was...

interjections – ouch, wow...

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2. As a second step explore why the lexical density of the story phases are
different to those of the history phases by analysing their respective nominal
groups.

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…use a table or excel spread sheet…

Enclose any embedded nominal groups, prepositional phrases or clauses in

square brackets; you don’t have to analyse them, but take them into account
when you discuss the relation of lexical density to nominal group structure.

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Story phases

Focus Deictic P-Deictic Numerative Epithet Classifier Thing Qualifier

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History phases

Focus Deictic P-Deictic Numerative Epithet Classifier Thing Qualifier

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…after doing your analysis look for patterns of similarity and difference
between the story and history phases…

e.g.

- amount of embedding
- number and kinds of Epithets
- number of Classifiers
- number of Qualifiers
…

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…and then write a paragraph, one for each of the two sets of phases,
summarising your results and how they help explain the difference in lexical
density.

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3. Next we need to ask if the nominal groups function differently in clauses… in
different roles in different types of process?

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…for this analysis use the division of the text into ranking clauses you
presented earlier (a ranking clause is a clause, including any embedding)

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- compile your analysis in tables, a separate one for each main
process type in the story phases and in the history phases…

…analyse embedded clauses as Participants in the clause they

are embedded in and also separately.

Eg. For…

The guy [[I saw]] looked tired.

Analyse both…

The guy… looked tired

And…

I saw

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- Begin with an analysis of transitivity (process types and
participant roles and circumstances)

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extra Actor Process Goal Scope Recipient/ Circumstance type
Agent* Client

* Extra Agent = Initiator, Inducer, Attributor, Assigner

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extra Behaver Process Scope Receiver Circumstance type
Agent

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extra Sayer Process Verbiage Receiver Circumstance type
Agent

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extra Agent Carrier Process Attribute Circumstance type
The guy [[I saw]] looked tired

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Extra Agent Token Process Value Circumstance type

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Extra Agent Senser Process Phenomenon Circumstance type

[[I saw]]

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Process Existent Circumstance type

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- now look for patterns, for example…

…the types of process in the two sets of phases

…the types of process in ranking (unembedded) vs embedded clauses

…who or what gets to be an extra agent (Initiator, Inducer, Attributor,

Assigner), or Actor, or Senser (check for patterns for each transitivity function)

…is there a different pattern of Circumstances in the story vs the history

phases?

Write two or three paragraphs comparing and contrasting the two texts in
terms of TRANSITIVITY.

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- Now reanalyse the text from an ergative perspective; does this analysis tell
us anything about differences between the story and history phases in terms
of who acts on other entities and who gets acted upon?

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- Story phases…

Agent Process Range Medium Circumstance type

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- history phases…

Agent Process Range Medium Circumstance type

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4. There is no need to do a detailed MOOD analysis on these two texts. But
do analyse any clauses containing a Comment Adjunct or Mood Adjunct.

Use a separate table for each of these clauses, specifying relevant mood
functions (Vocative, Comment Adjunct, Mood Adjunct, Subject, Finite,
Predicator, Complement, Adjunct).

Unsurprisingly that guy looks tired

Comment Subject Finite/ Adjunct
Adjunct Predictor

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- story phases

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- history phases

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5. Now do a THEME analysis.

Set your analysis out for the story vs the history phases in tables organised
like the one on the following slide.

Analyse each ranking clause; in addition take any hypotactically dependent

clauses coming before their a as marked Themes.

Comment on the method of development of the story vs the history part of the
text as composed by patterns of Theme choice.

Comment on the point of the story vs the history part of the text as composed
by choices for minimal New.

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Textual Interpersonal Marked Theme minimal New
Theme Theme Theme

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Textual Interpersonal Marked Theme minimal New
Theme Theme Theme

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6. Your final analysis is for clause complex relations (between ranking clauses); use a vertical
analysis like we have been using on the board in class, e.g.

Use a table to make sure you keep your columns clear.

Analyse all clause complex relations as hypotactic or paratactic, and as = + x ' ", using proper
notation.

Remember you are only analysing relations between ranking clauses inside clause complexes
(i.e. written sentences); ignore any embedded clauses or embedded clause complexes!
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Comment on the differences between the story and history phases of the text.
 7. Analyse the following verbal groups and verbal group complexes; layout in
tables as modelled below (include extra layers for verbal group complexes).

Comment on how the verbal groups position events in the text.

was
growing
used to come
would… sit
was dressed
stopped coming
don’t know
was disappearing
had given
had been deprived
did not have
continues
‘s

should have been going to be saved

should have ^ v-en be going to ^ v be ^ v-en save
modal past future passive event
amodal b– g+ dpass eevent
modalised passive ‘future in past’
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8. Your final task is to discuss the way your analyses show the difference
between the story and the history phases.

Explain how the grammatical choices work together, ideationally,

interpersonally and textually, to achieve the social purpose of the distinct
story and the history phases.

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