The roles of dissociative and (non-)completive morphology in structuring Totela (Bantu) narratives

In Totela narratives, infinitive-based ‘narrative’ morphology alternates with forms that are inflected for tense and aspect. While narrative morphology can be used with verbs depicting sequential events, inflected forms can be used with predicates of both non-sequential and sequential events. This paper argues that when inflected forms appear, especially in contexts where narrative morphology might also be appropriate, they play important roles in signaling narrative structure. The three most common categories of inflected verbs in narratives are examined, namely forms indicating ‘completion’, ‘non-completion’, and ‘dissociation’. Dissociative marking appears at the beginning and ending of a narrative, and frames it by shifting the cognitive domain to a world, separate from the world of telling, where listener belief can be suspended to include narrative events. Inside that world, Completive and Non-completive marking is used to reflect story-internal reality, to provide structure to the narrative, and to direct listener responses.