TITLE:
Embosi Possessives: A Pragmatic Account
AUTHORS:
Kiba Ngapoula
KEYWORDS:
Embosi, Possessives, Definiteness, Deixis, Reference, Presupposition, Implicature, Speech Act
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.15 No.1,
February
28,
2025
ABSTRACT: This work broaches the context-dependent aspects of possessives in the Embosi language. The study reveals that Embosi possessives express definiteness with the familiarity aspect of the possessive noun phrase. It also demonstrates that Embosi possessives have the function of personal and social deixis when they are used with entities whose interpretation depends on the situation in which they occur. Used as referential expressions, they serve as both anaphora and associative anaphora. The analysis also proves that in the communication act, possessives in Embosi express the presuppositional information. Depending on the context, possessives in Embosi violate maxims of communication, leading to the emergence of implicature. The analysis finally shows that through the speech act theory, the contextual use of Embosi possessives in speech acts highlights the locution, illocution, and perlocution dimensions with respect to felicity conditions.