Reordering for prominence and consequent reconfiguration of the mood structure in Gikuyu clauses

Abstract

Certain communication situations may need emphasis on specific sentence elements. Speakers utilise their linguistic competence to choose from various emphatic structures for the need, structures resulting from reconstruction of the basic sentence. This reconstruction could be through reordering of clause elements through processes like: passivisation, cleft and pseudo-cleft structuring, topicalisation, and inversion of clause elements. This paper aimed at establishing the realization of these processes in Gĩkũyũ and their effects on the syntactic analysis of the mood structure in the clause as exchange analysis within Functional Grammar theory. The data for the paper was Gĩkũyũ clauses portraying the reordering processes. The paper adopted a descriptive research design, purposively sampling the clauses and their sources. The clauses were grouped under the various reordering processes and subjected to clause as exchange analysis, which was compared to that of their kernel sentences for the effect of the reordering on the mood structure. The reordering processes were found in Gĩkũyũ and the processes discovered to affect the mood structure of the kernel clauses, either in the reconfiguration of the structure or reconstitution of its elements. Some instances of passivisation were discovered to drop some mood elements like Complement, while the subject-complement inversion led to a Mood Residue inversion. The paper concludes that Gikuyu has resources enabling its users to strategically place specific elements for prominence as required by a given communication context. The findings significantly revealed the flexibility of Gikuyu clauses and the applicability of Systemic Functional Linguistics in analyzing Gikuyu emphatic clauses.