A LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED TEXTS IN NYANJA

Abstract

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