A LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED TEXTS IN NYANJA

概要

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In this study, formal and informal principles of logic were applied to selectedtexts written in Nyanja, an African language spoken primarily in Eastern Zambia. The investigationwas corpus-based and considered fi ve text types or genres of discourse: everydayconversations, novels, oral narratives, plays, and proverbs. In total, 545 syllogisms wereformalized and categorized according to syllogism type. The analysis then identifi ed patternsof logic used within various text types and in the entire dataset. The fi ndings for each genre andfor all genres as a collective corpus are discussed in this paper. One of the major conclusionsof the study was that humans use an abbreviated system of logic in actual practice. No syllogismwas found to be used in its entirety, from premises to conclusion. This analysis also foundthat 80% of free communication or conversation was in the form of conclusions, which are theend products of the syllogism process.
2011-09-15