Tail-head linkage in Upper Guinea Coast languages

Abstract This paper draws attention to a phenomenon at the intersection of pragmatics, discourse analysis and syntax known as tail-head linkage (THL) in Baïnounk Gubëeher and other West African languages spoken in Upper Guinea (Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Cabo Verde). THL is a discourse feature common in narratives and procedural texts, whereby phrases or parts of phrases are repeated in consecutive phrases to create discourse cohesion. Largely absent from European languages, THL is common in languages of Papua, Australia and the Amazon, but has not yet been described in depth for any African or so-called Creole languages. However, these structures are well attested in Atlantic languages spoken in the Casamance area and also in various of the regional Portuguese based Creoles. As these languages are not closely genetically related, THL is a good candidate for an areal feature. Drawing on a corpus of transcribed texts in Baïnounk Gubëeher and Joola Kujireray and Banjal as well as experimental data in those languages as well as four varieties of Upper Guinea Creoles (Santo Antão, São Vicente, Casamance, Bissau), the discursive function, frequency and the syntactic strategies for the use of these structures are described and compared.