Analysis of Nepali Conversation

Abstract

This dissertation entitled"Analysis of Nepali Conversation" is a descriptivestudy. It is an attempt to find out some common features of Nepali conversation(NC)and present them as they appear in NCs. Moreover, it also aims to make an analysisand to describe different parts of NCs likeopening, closing, pause, overlapping,andrepair. The data for this study were 15 recorded conversations between two peopleenjoying different social roles. These conversations were collected from real socialsettings likein the hospital, in the street, in the room, in the park, in the bus, in theschool premises,etc. The data collected have been transliterated by following RomanTransliteration Symbols for Nepali proposed and used by Turner (1931). The commonfeatures of NCs identified in analysing the data are listed down, and they aredescribed with the examples from the data collected. Each part of NCs is studied andtheseparts are presented statistically and descriptively. During the analysis of NCs, itis found that omission of subject and overt linkers, repetition of words or phrases,simple deviation in structures are proved to be common properties of Nepaliconversation. Similarly it is found that most NCs opens with terms ofaddressing/relation whether the participants are known to each other or not. Similarly,pause, overlapping and repair are common in NCs. The pause in the expression of thesame speaker is for correcting the previous piece of speech and the pause between thespeeches of the two participants (ie. Silencehere) is for turn taking. In the case ofoverlapping, it is notified that the speaker can continue or stop his/her speech even ifthe next speaker overlaps the previus speaker. In short, the language in conversation,i.e. oral form is different form that in spoken form. The thesis consists of four chapters: chapter one introduces the study in termsof general background, review of the related literature, objectives, significance of thestudy, and definition of terms. Chapter two deals with the methodology adopted for the study under which thesources of data, sampling procedure, tools for data collection, procedure of datacollection, and limitations of the study are duly presented. Chapter three presents the analysis and interpretation of the data. In this sectionboth statistical and descriptive approaches have been used. Chapter four discusses the findings and recommendations of this research. Thefindings have been presented in the descriptive form. The references and appendices form the concluding part of the thesis.