“You know how strange they talk up there, but yo can understand what they’re saynig”:1 Rulfo’s generative grammar
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/Metyper.2012.vi28.14421Keywords:
Mexican narrative;, Rulfo;, speech;, Generative Grammar;, TilcuatazoAbstract
The relationship between Rulfo’s writing and the rural speech of Jalisco has been extensively studied by critics; and it has often been noted that Rulfo’s peasants do not speak like their real models; that is, that Rulfo’s characters speak a fictionalized language. What has been scarcely explored is the generative capacity that it displays in the mouths of the characters. Terms such as “apalcuachar”, “arrejolar” and “tilcuatazo” are true creations as they do not appear in dictionaries, despite which the reader can almost naturally understand their meanings. In this paper I explore the phenomenon of the generation of these terms and the consequent understanding of the reader, based on the notion of “generative grammar”.
Downloads
Metrics
References
HARSS, LUIS (2003). “Juan Rulfo o la pena sin nombre”. En CAMPBELL, FEDERICO, La ficción de la memoria. Juan Rulfo ante la crítica. México: UNAM/Era, pp. 61-88; originalmente, en HARRS, LUIS, Los nuestros, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1966.
LACKENDOFF, RAY, “The representational structures of the language faculty and their interactions”, en BROWN, COLIN M. y HAGOORT, PETER (Eds.), The neurocognition of language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
RULFO, JUAN, El Llano en llamas, edición crítica de Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, Madrid: Cátedra, 2001, 13ª ed.
RULFO, JUAN, El Llano en llamas, edición crítica de Francoise Perus, Madrid: Cátedra, 2017, 4ª ed.
RULFO, JUAN, Pedro Páramo, ed. de José Carlos González Boixo, Madrid: Cátedra, 2017, 30ª ed.
RULFO, JUAN, Pedro Páramo, traducción de Margaret Sayers Peden, New York: Grove Press, 1994.
RULFO, JUAN, Toda la obra, ed. crítica de Claude Fell, México: Conaculta (Colección Archivos 17), 1992.
SANDOVAL GODOY, LUIS, Modos de hablar en Jalisco, México: Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco, 2004.
SANTAMARÍA, FRANCISCO J., Diccionario de Mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, 1959.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who have publications with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain their copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication of their work, which is simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License that allows third parties to share the work provided that its author and first publication in this journal are indicated.
b. Authors may adopt other non-exclusive licensing arrangements for distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. depositing it in an institutional telematic archive or publishing it in a monographic volume) provided that initial publication in this journal is indicated.
c. Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work via the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematics archives or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work (see The Open Access Effect).