Directives to humans and to domestic animals: the imperative and some interjections in Zargulla

Abstract

The paper presents analysis of the imperative clause in Zargulla. The imperative is used to express directives both to humans and domestic animals, representing an overlapping area between inter-human and humanto-animal communication. In directives to humans, the imperative in Zargulla makes distinction between singular and plural addressee. Moreover, emphatic and negative imperatives as well as reported directives are morphologically distinguished. Directives to domestic animals include interjectional summonses and dispersal terms as well as a restricted set of verbal commands to take or not to take specific positions or directions of movement. In the verbal commands to domestic animals only the second person singular imperative form is used. As such, the forms used are not simple mimicry of the calls the animals make. Rather, they reflect a level of arbitrariness that is characteristic of human language. Although some mechanisms such as repetitions, shortening, nasalization of vowels, and/or alternating tone and intonation characterize directives to animals, Zargulla utterances used for addressing different domestic animal types are discrete units. They constitute a sub-system of the lexicon and grammar of the language which speakers must learn for communication.