Discourse Coherence in Narratives and Conversations: A Case Study in Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan)

Genre effects on the construction of discourse coherence are investigated through a case study in Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan, northwestern Mexico and in Arizona). Five different discourse factors (referential continuity, finiteness vs. nonfiniteness, information structure, pausing and intonation contours, and discourse markers) are selected in order to compare how they function together to create discourse coherence in two different texts representative of two main discourse genres: monologues (narrative) and dialogues (conversation). Differences between the texts are identified not only for each feature separately but also in terms of correlations between these features.