Narrative and past habitual sequences in Hausa

Abstract

Based on the overall properties of narratives, Wald (1987) has proposed that past habitual sequences are conflated narratives and are only minimally different from single-event sequences. The aim of this paper is to test this minimal difference analysis in light of two later studies of Hausa discourse (Brye 1991, Cain 1991) that focus on the structure and peak-marking features of narratives. Using the autobiographical story Yarintata (My Childhood) by Moussa-Aghali (2000) as its main data source, this paper shows that the peak-marking features found in typical narrative sequences are also found marking peaks in past habitual sequences, so that Wald's (1987) analysis can indeed be maintained.