Geesó Duqa, approaches to an Iraqw tale

This article grew out of a course on oral texts taught by Maarten Mous. We show the crucial aspects of a single Iraqw tale, i.e. its structure, the performance and its coherence, by adapting various literary and linguistic approaches. Anne-Christie Hellenthal applies the theories of Propp to this tale in section 3, Henriette Daudey investigates the performance aspects of the story teller and in particular her use of pauses in section 4 and Heleen Smits made a study of coherence of the tale through the use of demonstratives, section 5. After a short introduction on Iraqw verbal art in section 1, we present the complete story in an English translation in section 2. The Iraqw text with interlineair glosses is given in an appendix.