Non-Speech-Act Participants in
Chiricahua Apache
Narrative With Special
Reference to the Fourth Person
Non-Speech-Act Participants in Chiricahua Apache
Narrative
With Special Reference to the Fourth Person
SIL Language and Culture Documentation and Description 35
©2017 SIL International®
ISSN 1939-0785
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The aim has been to cover all usages of the fourth person in Mithlo’s and Kenoi’s Chiricahua Apache narratives in Hoijer 1938 and in so doing to discuss the fourth person in contextualised sentences in narrative discourse.
The fourth person is neutral with respect to the topicality scale defined by the third person pronominal yi-/bi- alternation. Fourth person is found in three functions in the corpus (apart from a ‘polite’ usage found in quotes): in fourth person participant tracking, in ‘impersonals’, and, in the absence of fourth person tracking, fourth person coding of non-agents may occur in post-quotatives and non-quotatives. This third usage generally occurs in the context of dialogue. The participant whose point of view it is may change, and then any object pronominals, third person yi- (or bi- as the case may be) and fourth person go-, switch in reference.
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Abbreviations
sNP nominal phrase coindexed with the subject pronominal in the verb
oNP nominal phrase coindexed with an object pronominal, direct or postpositional, in the verb
The following abbreviations are used in relation to the verbs:
1s first person singular 2s second person singular 2p second person plural Ø third person subject
3 bi- form of the third person object pronominal 3' yi- form of the third person object pronominal
4 fourth person
Figures (and INDEF) also occur representing possessors
DISTR distributive INDEF indefinite RECIP reciprocal
SIT situational (or areal)
sg, dl, pl singular, dual, plural (when the verb stem is singular, dual, or plural respectively, with respect to the subject if the verb is intransitive and to the object if transitive)
OPT optative
Other abbreviations are:
DUBIT dubitative
EMPH emphatic
MKR a postpositional marker NARR narrative enclitic
NEG negative
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Contents
Abbreviations 1 Introduction
2 The third and fourth person pronominals
2.1 The third person object pronominals yi- and bi-2.1.1 The third person yi-/bi- alternation
2.1.2 Third person tracking by the yi-/bi- alternation 2.1.3 Further properties of third person bi- and yi-2.1.4 Exceptional yi-/bi-Ø-V clauses
2.2 The fourth person pronominals
3 Fourth person tracking
3.1 Continuous fourth person tracking illustrated 3.2 Termination of fourth person tracking
3.3 Suspension of fourth person coding in fourth person tracking 3.3.1 For the removal of ambiguity
1
The Chiricahua Apache texts selected for the study of the fourth person in narrative discourse in this paper consist of the thirty-one narratives by Lawrence Mithlo and Sam Kenoi published in Hoijer 1938. It became evident early in the study—which was initially concentrated on the ten Mithlo narratives and Kenoi’s eight Coyote stories—that, although all were folkloric (Mithlo’s narratives are ‘in-the-beginning’ tales, the last one a Coyote story in part), the two narrators differed in their use of the pragmatic resources of the language. The ten Mithlo narratives have been studied separately from the eight Coyote stories by Kenoi, and in part these latter separately from others by Kenoi—three about visitations of mountain spirits, seven ‘Foolish People’ narratives, and three ‘at-night’ narratives (describing incidents that happen when the Apache are moving about covertly at night for whatever reason).
It has been observed that “[p]revious research done on the pronominal system in Navajo and other Athabaskan languages has largely focused its attention on the alternation that occurs in transitive clauses between the third-person pronominal prefixes yi- and bi-…. [W]hile the majority of analyses offer a cursory glance at the fourth person pronominal marker, not much attention has focused on [its] uses….” One roadblock has been that “the existing research on the pronominal markers has been mainly based on ‘isolated, noncontextualized sentences’ (Thompson 1989[a]:23), which, as of yet, has not provided a satisfactory description of the function of the pronominal prefixes, especially the fourth person” (Gales 2007:1f).
The Chiricahua Apache examples to be presented in this paper are all from Mithlo’s and Kenoi’s narratives and therefore have occurred in a discourse context.
2 The third and fourth person pronominals
Chiricahua Apache third and fourth person pronominals—the pronominals coding non-Speech-Act Participants (non-SAPs)—may be summarised as follows:
(1) person subject object
3 Ø yi-/
bi-4 ji-
go-In both the third and the fourth person, the direct and postpositional object pronominals are the same shape, and in the case of both persons the possessor pronominals are the same shape as the object pronominals.
A distributive prefix daa- in the verb indicates plurality, three or more, whether in the subject or the object or both, depending on context (Hoijer 1945:202).
2.1 The third person object pronominals yi- and
bi-The third person object pronominal yi- does not occur with first, second, and fourth person subjects and the third person yi-/bi- alternation occurs only when the subject is third person. bi-,1 the third person
*I am immensely grateful to Willem de Reuse for persevering with an earlier draft of this paper and giving me his most valuable comments on it. He is not, of course, to be held responsible in any way for errors that may remain in this current version of the paper. I also want to convey my very real thanks to Stephen H. Levinsohn who has commented on the later versions and has encouraged me towards coming up with the previously lacking concluding observations.
1 The third person postpositional object bi- has a variant hi- “which is apparently of commoner occurrence in the
object pronominal occurring with non-third person subjects, is generally zero when in direct object function (Hoijer 1945:197).2
Previous research has shown that, in Athabaskan languages generally, bi- codes more topical participants than does yi- (Thompson 1979:16ff, Saxon 1984:43, 61, Saxon 1987, Thompson 1989b:155, 217, Willie & Jelinek 2000:265).3 Aissen (2000) has discussed bi- and yi- in Navajo in terms of obviation in the Algonquian sense, bi- the proximate in view of the fact that bi- is associated with topicality (Aissen 2000:134), and yi- the obviative.4
2.1.1 The third person yi-/bi- alternation
The yi-/bi- alternation in Apachean has received considerable study in isolated clauses with direct, not postpositional, objects (initially in, for example, Hale 1973, Frishberg 1972, and Shayne 1982; see also Thompson 1996). yi- occurs in direct constructions sNP oNPyi-Ø-V and bi- in inverse constructions oNP sNP bi-Ø-V.5,6 The phenomenon has been termed Subject-Object Inversion (SOI). In most isolated clauses, direct and inverse, the first NP is equal or greater in ‘rank’ to the second NP in an animacy hierarchy.7
In Apachean, an intransitive verb with a postpositional object is syntactically equivalent to a transitive verb, at least in respect of the yi-/bi- alternation (see, for example, Sandoval 1984:168; Sandoval & Jelinek 1989:350; see also Rice & Saxon 2005:708),8 and an intransitive verb with a
2 Young & Morgan (1987:64) say: “With the exception of certain types of transitivized intransitives, the 3rd person
direct object is represented by Ø when the subject of the verb is other than third person [that is, is first, second, and fourth as Young and Morgan's paradigms show]. Thus: … biníłdaah, you're seating him [second underline added] = transitivized nídaah, you are in the act of sitting down.”
3 Probably excepting the Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages (Thompson 1979:24), which possibly do not use the
cognate prefix for topicality.
4 An Algonquian-type obviation system cannot be present in the northern Athabaskan languages. In Algonquian, all
third persons are either proximate or obviative. But it is only in Apachean among the Athabaskan languages that all third person objects (and possessors) are either bi- or yi-, proximate or obviative (with or without a coindexed NP)— a pronominal object of a transitive verb cannot be absent. In the northern Athabaskan languages there are at least some clauses (in some of the languages, it is all clauses) in which an object NP excludes an object pronominal and any element that would be diagnostic of the obviation status of the object is lacking. (See Willie 2000b:378 for the same thing expressed in other terms.)
5 In representing the essentials of a clause schematically, the following abbreviations will be used: sNP represents a
nominal phrase coindexed with the subject pronominal in the verb and oNP a nominal phrase coindexed with an object pronominal, direct or postpositional. In the diagram of the verb word, V represents the verb base, and the penultimate element, immediately before V, the subject pronominal. Any one or more preceding elements are object pronominals—so go-Ø-V represents a verb word in which the first pronominal is the fourth person object go- and the second pronominal is the third person subject Ø-.
6 Because, in the northern Athabaskan languages, NP and object pronominals, whether direct or postpositional, are
generally in complementary distribution, structures sNP oNP yi-Ø-V and oNP sNP bi-Ø-V are generally non-occurring. (Dena’ina, Babine-Witsuwit’en, and Slavey are named among northern languages in which complementarity does not always hold (Rice & Saxon 2005:722).)
7 Judgments of the grammaticality of sentences sNP oNP yi-Ø-V versus oNP sNP bi-Ø-V with the same meaning for a
given pair of nouns do not always agree with the ranking hypothesis. “Young and Morgan (1980:171ff) asked nine Navajo speakers for grammaticality judgments on a variety of [pairs of yi-/bi- decontextualised] sentences which could involve SOI and found less than universal agreement” (Thompson 1996:82). “Some [Navajo] speakers have strict judgments agreeing with the ranking hypothesis, while other speakers can usually think of a situation where one noun has control over the other, and therefore have fluid judgments more in keeping with [a] control hypothesis. That there is wide variation is certainly true for Apache as well” (de Reuse 2006:211).
8 Rice and Saxon, in their overview of Athabaskan syntactic structure (Rice & Saxon 2005), draw on the facts
postpositional object will generally be treated as a transitive construction in the present paper. ‘Object’ will denote either a direct object or a postpositional object unless it is stated otherwise.
When the subject is third person, one-NP transitive clauses are generally oNP yi-Ø-V or sNPbi-Ø-V. In both two-NP and one-NP clauses, in direct clauses, the object NP, the second, or the only, NP, is coindexed with the object pronominal yi-, and in inverse clauses, the subject NP, the second, or the only, NP, is coindexed with the subject pronominal Ø-.
In addition to (sNP) oNPyi-Ø-V and (oNP) sNPbi-Ø-V clauses, cases of both (oNP) sNPyi-Ø-V and (sNP) oNPbi-Ø-V occur in Chiricahua Apache narrative and will be discussed below (sections 2.1.4.1 and 2.1.4.2, respectively).
2.1.2 Third person tracking by the yi-/bi- alternation
When the yi-/bi- alternation is used in participant tracking in Athabaskan, one of the participants when in object function is coded by bi- and the other by yi- (or their cognates). This “allows for a much more extensive use of anaphora in Athabaskan than would be possible without the alternation. Literal translations are often hard to follow because of this extensive use of anaphora” (Thompson 1979:21) (and paucity of NP). Thompson exemplifies an extract from a Dena’ina story collected by Tenenbaum in which a wolf is following a man and finally kills him. There are twenty-three clauses and eleven changes of subject but only four nouns: tiqin ‘wolf’ in four changes of subject when the wolf becomes the subject, and there is no NP-coding of the man at any point. Obviative ye- codes the wolf as object (when the man is subject) and proximate ve- codes the man (when the wolf is subject) (ye- and ve- are cognates of yi-and bi- respectively).9
The yi-/bi- alternation may be used in the same way in Apachean and its use is the default third person participant reference strategy. Sandoval says, “In my work with text analysis [in Jicarilla
Apache], I have seen that sentences without nominals are the most frequent; and in discourse, nominals are added only when it is necessary to make clear what the referents of the pronominal verbal arguments are [similarly, Uyechi 1990:4(5); Müller 2002:58(14)]. The following is from a recording I made of a narrative told by my mother, Margarita Sandoval” (Sandoval 1984:163):
(2) gaat’í ̨ -go nahá anlé ná ̨ąłni daayiiłni ná /
it.is.light -when for.us you.make possibly they.said.to.him NARR /
doo_____da daabiiłni ná / dooda daabiiłni -nda
no-o-o-o-o he.told.them NARR / no he.told.them -even.though
daayókąąh -go yanaada’iłt’éí -go dí ̨í ̨’įįshdi silí ̨ -go
they.were.begging.him -when they.repeatedly.supplicated.him -when four.times it.became -when
aoo biiłni ná /
yes he.said.to.them NARR /
Note the y(i)-/bi- alternation in the alternate lines, depending on to which participant the pronominal refers, and the absence of any NP that refer to the two participants, “he” and “they”.
The following is a Chiricahua Apache example from Kenoi’s “The Foolish People and the White Men”. (In this and similar displays to follow, only the essentials of a clause outside quotes are included and the contents of any quotes are only summarised. The numbers in the narrow columns represent my own numbering of the clauses in the narrative; they are sometimes discontinuous because for brevity’s sake not all the clauses are necessarily included. If a pronominal codes a ‘prop’, it is italicised and so is any NP coindexed with it; its English gloss is italicised also.)
postpositional object) with an unmarked third person subject Ø- can only be y- (Lovick 2005, section 3.1.2). Jung (1999:130) has other examples.
(3) 001a sNP bi-Ø-V White men came to them (the Foolish People) in a group. 009 “Why/What has someone done to you that 010 you sabre him!”
011 yi-Ø-V they say to them (to white men).
012c bi-V (passive) They (the Foolish People) began to be killed.
a The verb of clause 001 is baajíńzhoozh‘they came to them in a group’, third person subject. ji- in this verb form is not the fourth person subject prefix but is a derivational prefix ji- (> j-) collocating with this stem -zhóósh, -zhoozh ‘several move as a group’.
b The verb nádaayótą of 008, ‘they went between them’, can mean to get between fighters (Hoijer 1938:131). c In 012, yi- is not an option in the unipersonal passive verb. Similarly in line 002.
In clauses 001–011, proximate bi- refers to the Foolish People and any obviative yi- to the white men, and any NP refer to the white men, not to the main characters—the Foolish People. Stated in other terms, the point of view remains with the Foolish People as the more topical participants in this passage (for ‘point of view’, see Chafe 1994:132; also called ‘empathy’ [Kuno 1987:206]; Fillmore [1997] uses the term ‘deictic center’).
The context of passage (4) from Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Rolling Rock” is that Coyote has been warned by someone unnamed that a big rock lying by the road is one that moves about and he should not defecate on it. Nevertheless, he does so, and the rock rolls out in pursuit of him:
(4) 015 sNP bi-Ø-V The rock rolled out after him.
The yi-/bi- alternation may extend to postpositional phrases when the postposition occurs with an (inalienably-possessed) body part (Willie 1991:195f) such as -kétsíń-ee ‘ankle-at’, so that the bi-structures in (4), bi-Ø-V and bi-kétsíń-ee Ø-V, are syntactically equivalent. bi- refers to Coyote, the main character, and yi- to the rock, and the point of view remains with Coyote, whether Coyote is subject or not.
(Quotative verb forms10 are defined here by both structure and function. In function, they introduce or close quotes; in structure they have the form transitive (ʔá)-O-ł-S-ⁿdí ‘say (so) to’ or intransitive (ʔá
)-S-ⁿdí ‘say (so)’. ʔá- occurs in pre-quotatives and not in post-quotatives; a pre-quotative clause alone is a grammatical sentence but a post-quotative clause without a quote is not. Not all quotes have a pre-quotative and post-pre-quotative, and a quote may occur without one or both.11 Note that by definition
(O-ch’įį-)yá-S-ł-ti ‘speak (to)’, for example, is not a quotative.)
When passages such as the above are studied in which there are two major participants onstage, third-person-coded, and the point of view remains with one of them, the more topical participant, the canonical forms are found to be as follows, in which the A. forms occur when the topical participant is subject and the B. forms when the topical participant is object:
(5) A. is subject, and if the verb is transitive the other participant is coded by obviative yi-;
sNP is generally absent with change of subject B. (sNP) bi-Ø-V topical participant is object, coded by proximate
object bi-;
sNP is generally present with change of subject
In fact, any NP, subject or object, tends to code the less-topical participant.
‘Props’ are coded by yi- when the subject is third person, illustrated by the props ‘all his strength’ in 018 and ‘his very best speed’ in 023 of (4) above. Attention will be drawn to other examples as they arise.
Canonical forms are those ‘bare bones’ of clause structures which occur with a certain frequency; that is, excluding those that are judged to be rare or quite infrequent. By the ‘bare bones’ of a clause is meant the verb including in it only those pronominals which code the two interacting participants, together with any NP coindexed with the pronominals.
The point of view does not always remain with one participant and the forms which occur in that case are discussed in section 4.
Also, chart (5) above does not cover the case of clauses containing verb forms go-Ø-V (in which go-is the fourth person object pronominal) which, in the absence of participant tracking by means of the fourth person (section 3), occur in certain post-quotative and non-quotative clauses (to be discussed in sections 4 and 5 for when the point of view does not remain, and for when it does remain, with one participant).
2.1.3 Further properties of third person bi- and yi
-Before attention is directed towards the fourth person, some further properties of the third person pronominals bi- and yi- will be documented, particularly noting those features to which reference will be made in following sections.
10 Pre-quotative verb forms ʔá(daa)biłjiⁿdí ‘3:4.(DISTR.)say.so.to’ do not occur in their full form; instead, ʔáałjiⁿdí ‘3:4.say.so.to’ and ʔádaałjiⁿdí ‘3:4.DISTR.say.so.to’ are found (though Hoijer 1938 never analyses these forms).
ʔádaiłⁿdí ‘3':3.DISTR.say.so.to’ is found for ʔádaayiiłⁿdí and optionally ʔáyiiłⁿdí > ʔáiłⁿdí ‘3':3.say.so.to’. ʔá(daa)biiłⁿdí
‘3:3.say.so.to’ does not contract. Reductions are not found in the post-quotatives.
In Mithlo’s narratives, the quotative verb stem always carries high tone. In Kenoi’s narratives, it does so in his mountain spirit narratives and in his Coyote story “Coyote Marries His Own Daughter”; however, in his Foolish People narratives, in his ‘at-night’ narratives, and in his Coyote stories in general it carries low tone, with three exceptions.
11 Webster (2006:353) uses the term “Apachean quotative couplet” for co-occurring pre- and post-quotatives and
Perkins (1978:136) observes that in Navajo, when the subject is inanimate,12 there is no yi-/
bi-variation and only bi- is possible (and in that case the subject-object word order is immaterial
grammatically) (see also Saxon 2001, Rice & Saxon 2005:732). No exception to these findings has been found in Mithlo’s and Kenoi’s Chiricahua texts. Examples follow from Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Money Tree”:
(6) dí -í ditsį -í bééso baanáńt’í ̨ This -REL tree -REL money 3:3.grow.froma
oNP sNP bi-Ø-V
‘this tree, money grows on it’
aIn the verb glosses, the figures represent the person of the pronominals and work inwards toward the
stem, and therefore the last figure represents the person of the subject.
and from his “Coyote Holds Up the Sky”:
(7) dí -í yá béyańʔá -í [hóńshtą]
this -REL sky 3:3.brace.up -REL [3:1s.hold] sNP oNP bi-Ø-V
‘[I hold] this (tree) that braces up the sky’
In the subsections following, the focus will be on clauses in which the subject is animate.
In Apachean studies, a principle of ‘parallel processing’ says that in a complex sentence consisting of two transitive clauses with coreferential third person subjects and coreferential third person direct objects, both object pronominals are yi- or both are bi-. If the objects are not coreferential but the subject of one clause has reference to the object of the other, then the object pronominals are bi- in the one and
yi- in the other (Willie 1991:135f, Willie & Jelinek 2000:269f).
If an intransitive verb and indirect (postpositional) object is syntactically equivalent to a transitive verb, then parallel processing should hold with respect to indirect objects as well as direct.
However, there are examples in Mithlo’s and Kenoi’s narratives which do not accord with parallel processing. In Kenoi’s “The First Mountain Spirit Ceremony” and “The Visit of the Mountain Spirits”, whenever the mountain spirits worship the ceremonial fire, the clause structure oNPyi-Ø-V occurs, but whenever the mountain spirits circle toward the fire or move around it, the clause structure (oNP) bi-Ø-V
occurs, the object pronominals, whether yi- or bi-, having reference to the fire. The essential difference is that the object is direct with the verb base ł-zı̨́ ‘worship’, and the object is postpositional in the other two cases, with postpositions -ch’įį ‘toward’ or -ná ‘around’. In (8), a direct object i- (< yi-) occurs in the first verb and an indirect object hi- (< bi-) occurs in the second verb, both having reference to the fire:
(8) kǫǫ -í daisí ̨ -go, hinájazhosha -náʔa
fire -REL 3':3.DISTR.worship -SUB 3:3.group.moves.around -NARR ‘worshipping the fire, they are moving around it as a group’
aThe verb stem is -zhóósh, -zhoozh ‘several move as a group’, the stem with which the derivational prefix ji
-collocates. See example (3), table note (a).
(Plurality of the participants is signalled by da- (< daa-) ‘distributive’ in the first verb and by the stem -zhosh ‘group moves’ in the second.)
In the following sentence in Mithlo’s “The Killing of the Prairie Dogs”, hi- in the first verb is
postpositional, with postposition -ch’įį, and i- (< yi-) a direct object in the second, both having reference to the fire:
(9) kǫǫ -í ʔáxááné -zhį hich’įįdaaneesʔá ̨ -go dainéłʔí ̨ -go, […] fire -REL close -to 3:3.DISTR.put.head.toward -SUB 3':3.DISTR.look.at -SUB […] ‘they having put their heads close to the fire, they looking at it, [he threw the salt into the fire toward them]’
In these two cases (8) and (9), assuming that hi-13 is a variant of bi-, a proximate bi- in one clause is coreferential with an obviative yi- (> i-) in the other in violation of parallel processing.
In (10) from Kenoi’s “Coyote Misses Real Rabbit”, there is an additional example of coreferential obviative direct object yi- (> i-) and proximate postpositional object bi- (> hi-) in a complex sentence:
(10) ʔigoiʔáń -ji ch’ídégoda ʔáilá -go hich’įįʔinádiłⁿdi -náʔa hole -to in.vain 3':3.do.so -SUB 3:3.keep.on.extending.hand.in.toward -NARR
‘doing him (reaching) (in)to the hole in vain, he keeps on extending his hand in toward him’
It seems that the violations of parallel processing may arise because, unless there is Subject-Object Inversion, direct objects with the third person subject Ø- can only be yi-,14 as in the first, second, and first verbs of (8), (9), and (10) respectively.
The one example that has been found in the corpus of a transitive clause with the third person subject Ø- in which a third person direct object appears to be bi-, not yi-, occurs in the following sentence from Kenoi’s “The Foolish People and the Horse”:
(11) ʔiłch’ą́go haʔdaajiistsas -go biłnádiiłgho -náʔa in.all.directions 3:3.whip -SUB 3:3.run.with -NARR
‘he (Mescalero) whipping him (horse) alternately on both sides, he (horse) ran with him (Mescalero)’
In the first verb, -daaji- < -da-a-ji- < -daa-bi-ji-, and a- (< bi-)15 is the direct object. It could have been expected that the direct object would have been yi- (> i-), not only by virtue of being a direct object but also because the third person objects in the two clauses16 are non-coreferential, and therefore will be coded by bi- in the one and by yi- in the other (see ‘parallel processing’ earlier in this section). A solution would be to take refuge in a suggestion that -daaji- is a mis-transcription for -daiji- (< -daa-yi-ji-).
Presumably in the right context Subject-Object Inversion occurs in Chiricahua Apache with respect to direct objects as it does in other Apache languages (Jicarilla, Sandoval 1984; San Carlos, de Reuse 2006). Subject-Object Inversion occurs in Chiricahua Apache with respect to postpositional objects, illustrated for example by the following from Mithlo’s “Coyote Obtains Fire”:
13 See footnote 1.
14 In this, Chiricahua Apache would parallel Kaska, Gwich’in, Dena’ina, and others; see footnote 8.
15 In the first verb, if the direct object were yi-, then -dai- < -daa-yi- would be expected instead of -daa- < -daa-bi-,
direct object bi-. These reductions are similar to those found in quotatives, see footnote 10.
16 Hoijer (1938:131) says that ji- in the verb is the 3a [fourth person] subject prefix. If so, the coreferential
pronominal in the second verb of this complex sentence should be fourth person also. However, clearly the
(12) ʔákoo ʔá -ń maʔye -ń ńłch’iʔ -í bijoosⁿdeea -go […] then that -REL coyote -REL wind -REL 3:3.help -SUB […]
oNP sNP bi-Ø-V
‘then that Coyote the wind helping him […]’
abijoosⁿdee ‘he helped him’ is not a fourth person j(i)- subject form and nor is the bi- a direct object: the form gojoonáánásⁿdee ‘he helped him again’ occurs in Mithlo’s “The Quarrel Between Thunder and Wind”, in which joo- is clearly left of the subject prefix positions and direct object position in the verb. Hoijer calls joo- a thematic (derivational) prefix (1938:103) and bi- could be said to occur with a zero postposition (see Young & Morgan 1992:846).
(All object yi- are not direct, of course: postpositional object yi-, animate or inanimate, is found with such verbs as ‘return to’, ‘run from’, ‘pick up for’, ‘know about’, and ‘sit with’, and in the transitive quotative ‘say (so) to’.)
2.1.4 Exceptional yi-/bi-Ø-V clauses
In transitive clauses then, when both subject and object are third person, the coindexing rules between the pronominals in the verb and any NP adjuncts normally yield the direct and inverse clause structures (sNP) oNP yi-Ø-V and (oNP) sNPbi-Ø-V (or there is no NP adjunct). The apparently excluded transitive clauses are (oNP) sNPyi-Ø-V and (sNP) oNPbi-Ø-V.
2.1.4.1 Clauses (oNP) sNP yi-Ø-V
Rice and Saxon analyse oNP sNPyi-Ø-V clauses in Navajo in terms of “focus movement” (adopting the term from Willie (1991:207)) in which the sNP and oNP of a clause sNP oNPyi-Ø-V are inverted without any modification of the verb word (and there may be a resultant violation of the animacy hierarchy, a lower-ranking object preceding the subject). In the examples they discuss, the oNP may be a question word and focal (Rice & Saxon 2005:730).
However, in examples of (oNP) sNPyi-Ø-V in Mithlo and Kenoi’s narratives, it is the sNP which is focal and the oNP if present is a fronted topic. In “The Foolish People and the Missing Pack”, the pack -owner when he misses his pack first asks xaa-ń xééł shaanáyinʔą́ ‘who has taken (my) pack from me?’ in which the focal subject NP xaa-ń ‘who?’ precedes the object NP xééł ‘pack’, the normal order when the verb form is yi-Ø-V (normally question words occur where a corresponding non-interrogative word would (Willie 1991:203f)). When he repeats his question he says koyá xééł nníʔą́-í, xá-ń shaanáyinʔą́ ‘the pack I put here, who has taken it from me?’, oNP sNP yi-Ø-V, in which the object is fronted. The verb word is unchanged, and the fact that a fronted lower-ranking inanimate object now precedes a human subject does not block the fronting.
In Kenoi’s “The First Mountain Spirit Ceremony”, successive clauses are:
(13) gá ̨hé hooghé -í doo xádá ̨ ʔiyáa yégósį -da -náʔa
mt.spirit 3.be.called -REL NEG then someone 3':3.know.about -NEG -NARR
oNP sNP yi-Ø-V
‘mountain spirits no one at that time knows about them’
ⁿdé dáhóołeʔé yégósį -náʔa -ń […]
man only.one 3':3.know.about -NARR -REL […]
sNP yi-Ø-V
‘only one man who knows about them [lives among the Indians…]’
In Mithlo’s “The Child of the Water”, as White Painted Woman’s children are being born, it happens that:
(14) ghééʔye hooghé -ń kaayinłⁿdé -náʔa Giant 3.be.called -REL 4:3':3.eat.obj.from -NARR
sNP go-yi-Ø-V
‘he who is called Giant eats them (White Painted Woman’s children) from her’
The sNP is again focal, ‘Giant it is who eats them …’, reintroducing Giant.
Besides further examples of oNP sNP yi-Ø-V in which the sNP is focal, two additional instances of oNP sNPyi-Ø-V have been located in Mithlo’s and Kenoi’s narratives and the object NP is probably preposed by reason of its sheer length (though an object NP may be long without its being preposed). The following example is from Kenoi’s “The Foolish People Go to War”:
(15) tł’óół bizą́ą́yé -í ʔiłk’idą́ łı ̨́- beeʔiłédaastł’ǫ́ -náʔa -í łiʔ -ń
‘a small piece of rope which had apparently been used long ago to hobble a horse one of them picked up’
Jung (2000:97) has an example from Lipan Apache in which the clause structure is oNP sNPyi-Ø-V and mentions that there are others in which “heavy object noun phrases” are preposed yielding the same structure. Willie (1991:61) also says that in Navajo the normal interpretation of NP NPyi-Ø-V clauses may be overridden by NP which are “long complex nominals”, yielding oNP sNP yi-Ø-V.
2.1.4.2 Clauses (sNP) oNP bi-Ø-V
As mentioned above (section 2.1.3), sNP oNPbi-Ø-V may occur in Navajo when the subject is inanimate, as observed by Perkins.
However, there are a limited number of clause structures (sNP) oNPbi-Ø-V in Mithlo’s and Kenoi’s Chiricahua Apache narratives in which the subject is animate and such cases appear not to have been much discussed in the literature, probably for the reason that their analysis generally requires a larger discourse context than one sentence.
Perkins has data from Navajo in which bi- has a “focusing function” (1978:126):
(16) ashkii at’ééd hastiin yíighah ch’íínílóóz
In the latter case, the fact of the leading past is “more consequential” and bi- “directs emphasis” onto the man (to use Perkins’ words, ibid. 126). Although yi- and bi- contrast in these two sentences, there is no Subject-Object Inversion.17
The examples from Chiricahua Apache in this section also show bi- in a focusing or highlighting function, generally in a single clause (not within a span of clauses). When (sNP) oNPbi-Ø-V occurs (and the subject is animate), (sNP) Ø- refers to a higher-level topic. At the same time, oNPbi- refers to an entity that is topical within the clause to some degree: as noted, in a topicality hierarchy, bi- > yi- so that the choice of proximate bi- over obviative yi- in some way foregrounds the object in that clause and draws attention to it. It could be said that there are two topics in such clauses functioning at different levels.
The display (17) constitutes the whole brief narrative of Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Rock Rabbit”. Coyote is the higher-level topic and the coding in general is the default third person participant reference strategy set out in chart (5) (section 2.1.2). But in clause 004 the rabbit is coded by proximate bi- when Coyote, on seeing the rabbit, reacts at the turning point in the narrative (the ‘jumping towards’, the “more consequential” action):
a The verb form in 003 is a passive, unipersonal, so yi- is not an option. An earlier example occurred in
passage (3) above.
In Kenoi’s “Coyote Misses Real Rabbit”, Coyote is again the higher-level topic and the coding in general is the default third person participant reference strategy set out in chart (5), bi- coding Coyote and yi- coding the rabbit. However, verb forms bi-Ø-V occur in clauses 009 and 015, and in neither case does proximate bi- code the higher-level topic, Coyote. The choices of proximate bi- over obviative yi- in clauses 009 and 015 again mark Coyote’s reactions on seeing the rabbit, this time going on past the rabbit when he supposes it to be a rock-filled rabbit in contrast to jumping towards it (004 in (17)) when he had supposed it to be a live rabbit, and then this time running after it on seeing it jump up:
(18) 008 yi-Ø-V He (Coyote) did not pay attention to it (rabbit).
(19) 010 Ø-V He (Coyote) speaks:
Rocks do not defecate and clearly Coyote is subject in 013. The bi-coding of the rock foregrounds the rock in this clause in some way. The event is unexpected and surprising. It is certainly one of the key events in the narrative. In clause 026, the animated rock is obviously covering the hole, not the hole the rock; moreover, proximate bi- is not coding Coyote, the higher-level topic, but rather the hole. This is another key event, the culmination of the rock’s pursuit of Coyote in clauses 015–025. Did the hole cooperate with the rock acting against Coyote in some way? This idea stems from Shayne who found that the prefixing of bi- to the verb may indicate in some cases that “the goal somehow participates in the event” (1982:397).18
In Mithlo’s “The Gambling Game For Night and Day”, neglecting the go-coding of the fourth-person-tracked small ones in the matrix clause, the clause is another instance of oNPbi-Ø-V:
(20) ditsį łą́ -í sikaa -í bich’įįkaadaahíⁿdá -náʔa
tree 3.be.many -REL 3.clump.lies -REL 3:4:3.DISTR.sg.drag.from.toward -NARR
oNP bi-go-Ø-V
‘he (bear) goes dragging from them (small ones) toward a clump of many trees’
In any case, the bi-coding of the inanimate trees is unexpected. Is in fact the explanation of the bi-coding that the trees somehow participate in the event? By enabling the bear to get away from the attacking small ones? In the sentence immediately following, the trees may be bi-coded again but exceptionally the postposition -ghé ‘in’ occurs without an overt postpositional pronominal:
(21) ditsį sikaa -í kaaghédaayá -náʔa
tree 3.clump.lies -REL 4:3:3.DISTR.sg.go.in.from -NARR
oNP go-bi-Ø-V
‘he went into the clump of trees from them’
Kenoi’s “The Visit of the Mountain Spirits” has been about two supernatural mountain spirits who join the Indian dancers decorated as mountain spirits and whom the Indians unwisely try to follow when they return to the mountains. Consequently many Indians died. In the Coda to the narrative, the narrator contrasts the thinking of the Indians of the past to the thinking of present-day Indians about the
mountain spirits. In speaking of the Indians of the past, he says:
18 De Reuse too describes this phenomenon in San Carlos Apache. The following sNP oNPyi-Ø-V sentence implies that Mary, the subject, has full control of the remembering: Marynnéé yínálnii ‘Mary remembered the man’; whereas the sNP oNPbi-Ø-V sentence seems to imply that the man, the object, caused Mary to remember: Marynnéé bínálnii
(22) 104a sNP oNP bi-Ø-V These mountain spirits are valuable to the Indians. spirits’; ‘these mountain spirits were [valuable] with the Indians’ is a more word-for-word translation. The verb is a ‘psych’ verb of a type in which there is no yi-/bi- choice (Jelinek & Willie 1996:27).
The whole narrative is clearly about the mountain spirits but in the Coda the Indians are a secondary topic. In clause 108 the Indians of the past are coded by proximate bi- rather than obviative yi- in the structure oNP bi-Ø-V, drawing attention to the surprising fact that the mountain spirits talked to the oldtimers, because today as the narrator says, “they do not talk to us [and] therefore you will not believe” that they used to.
For a final example of (sNP) oNPbi-Ø-V, consider the following quote in Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Money Tree”. Coyote has fooled two white men and has driven off with their pack train. They go after him and ask in the coyote town:
(23) ʔįįshí ̨ łaʔ -ń xééł hiłʔinayoł -ń [doo xaaóóʔí ̨ -da ] here that.one -REL pack 3:INDEF:3.drive -REL [NEG 2s.see.someone -NEG ]
sNP oNP bi-Ø-V
“[You don’t see] anyone here driving a pack (train)?”
The feature distinguishing the person the two white men are looking for is that he is driving a pack train. hi- (< bi-) inxééł hiłʔinayoł ‘he is driving (animals; ʔ- ‘INDEF’) with packs’ is coindexed with xééł ‘pack’ and probably draws attention to this fact.
2.2 The fourth person pronominals
The fourth person pronominals, subject ji- and object go-, have reference to human or personified entities. Both generally exclude a coindexed NP (see, for example, Willie 2000b:378).
The fourth person may function as impersonal/unspecified, both in Navajo (Young & Morgan 1987:76f) and in Apache, and can be found in narrative in that function (see section 6). For non-narrative uses of the fourth person, see, for example, Willie 1991, chapter 4; the present paper will centre on the use of the fourth person in narrative.
The phenomenon of fourth person tracking in narrative is well-known in Navajo (Akmajian & Anderson 1970:5, Young & Morgan 1987:9, 76f) and occurs in Chiricahua Apache also as will be shown. In fourth person tracking, one participant is tracked by pronominals which are fourth person, whatever the grammatical function of the pronominal, whether subject, object, or possessor, across any changes in participant orientation. However, there is another major usage of fourth person in Hoijer’s Chiricahua Apache texts which is to be documented below also. These, and other features of the fourth person pronominals, will be discussed in the following sections (sections 3 to 6).
3 Fourth person tracking
For the most part, it is only in the Apachean languages that a fourth person is found that in one of its usages denotes a specific non-Speech-Act Participant (non-SAP) (that is, one that, like the third person, is not a first or second person speech-act participant).19 Young and Morgan say of the fourth person (called by them the third person alternate (3a)): “In narratives, the 3a pronoun serves to
distinguish between two 3rd persons, and is usually applied to the main character along with any other figure who gains prominence at some point in the story (more than one character may thus be
represented by the 3a pronoun at some point)” (1987:9).
Aissen says, “This [fourth person coding] permits continual reference [italics mine] to the main character…” (Aissen 2000:147). Whether by ‘continual’ is meant ‘frequently occurring’ or ‘without interruption’, there is a sense in which both are true. Fourth person tracking is continuous, or ‘without interruption’, when, in a narrative block, any coding of one participant is always fourth person and never third, and this is the sense in which the term ‘fourth person tracking’ will be understood in this paper. However, there is a sense in which fourth person tracking may be continual or ‘frequently occurring’. When a narrative contains more than one block in which there is continuous fourth person tracking, at least in Mithlo’s narratives it is generally the case that it is the same participant that is fourth-person-tracked in each block.
Continuously fourth-person-tracked participants are typically individuals, but may also be a
plurality such as ‘the Indians’ when the denotation is sufficiently precise in context. Other fourth-person-tracked pluralities include the two white men in Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Money Tree” and, in Kenoi’s “The Foolish People Acquire Coffee”, the Foolish People.
3.1 Continuous fourth person tracking illustrated
As remarked in section 2.2, in fourth person tracking, one participant is tracked by pronominals which are fourth person, whatever the grammatical function of the pronominal, whether subject, object, or possessor, across any changes in participant orientation.
To illustrate continuous tracking of participants by the fourth person, it will be clearer if a different type of display is used from that used above. In the display (24) presented below, each participant is tracked on one of the labelled vertical lines to the right (the label may be interior to the display), the figures indicating the person of the pronominal: “3” for third person (subject Ø- or object bi-), “3'” for the yi- form of the third person object, and “4” for fourth person (subject ji- or object go-).
To the right of the vertical lines, the grammatical function of each pronominal is indicated by “S” subject, “O1” direct object, “O2” postpositional object, and “Ps” possessor, with the pronominal allomorph shown in parentheses. “S2” will be found when the verb is a psych verb and the pronominal coding the psychological subject occurs in the postpositional object position. Horizontal lines connect these with the figure for the person of the participant and in these horizontal lines any significant feature of the verb relating to the participant (or prop) is indicated, including DISTR = distributive prefix, DUAL
= dual verb stem, PL = plural verb stem (as for clause 089 below).
If there is a coindexed NP in the clause, the participant to which it refers is shown in uppercase on the far right.
Quotes are boxed.
The passage (24) below is from Mithlo’s “The Killing of the Eagles”. Child of the Water is fourth-person-tracked in his initial encounter with the eagles until he has fooled the male eagle into carrying him (supposedly dead) to the eagle children. The eagle encourages the children to eat Child of the Water
19 In many of the non-Apachean Athabaskan languages, the cognates of the Apachean fourth person pronominals are
and flies off. Left alone with them, Child of the Water, now third-person-coded, is able to knock them down and kill them. He kills all of them except the youngest.
This is the point at which the passage begins. From clause 042 to the end of the narrative, Child of the Water (CoW) is fourth-person-tracked again, without a break, and there is no NP-coding of Child of the Water except in clause 042 at the point at which the fourth person tracking is initiated (and actually only twice earlier in the narrative). (Normally, as mentioned above in section 2.2, an NP does not occur coindexed with a fourth person pronominal but in clause 042 it is coindexed with the fourth person subject prefix ji-.20 The usual reasons for NP-coding, including change of subject and
introduction/reintroduction of participants, do not apply. Possibly the NP-coding occurs because there is a major section break at this point.)
20 Apart from the fact that multiple fourth-person-coded participants are not present in passage (24), the NP-coding
(24) CoW YOUNGEST |
041 ʔá -ń dásí ʔikéyánaaghá -ń dá- ʔá -ná 3__________________________________________________ S(Ø) that -REL just youngest -REL even- that -EMPH |
ʔináisįį -náʔa. | 3'____________________________ O1(i) THAT
3':3.leave.alone -NARR | | YOUNGEST
He (CoW) spared only the youngest. | |
| |
042 nágo tóbájiishchiné -ń ʔá -ń ʔikéyanaaghá -ń 4__________________________________________________ S(sh) CHILD.OF.
and Child.of.the.Water -REL that -REL youngest -REL | | THE.WATER
044 biłjiⁿdí -náʔa. 4__________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.say.to -NARR | |
he (CoW) says to him. | 3_____________________________ O2(bi)
| |
045 ʔákoo ʔá -ń bizá ̨á ̨yé -ń ʔágoołⁿdí -náʔa: | 3_____________________________ S(Ø) THAT LITTLE
then that -REL little.one -REL 4:3.say.so.to -NARR | | ONE
Then that little one speaks to him: 4__________________________________________________ O2(go)
| |
046 047
| |
048 goołⁿdí -náʔa. | 3_____________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.say.to -NARR | |
he says to him (CoW). 4__________________________________________________ O2(go)
050
| |
051 biłjiⁿdí -náʔa. 4______________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.say.to -NARR | |
he (CoW) says to him. | 3________________________ O2(bi)
| |
052
| |
053 goołⁿdí -náʔa. | 3________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.say.to -NARR |
he says to him (CoW). 4______________________________________________ O2(go)
|
054 ʔákoo ʔáńdee -da, ʔáshí ̨ […] bánjiyeedzá -náʔa. 4______________________________________________ S(ji)
then now -even there […] 3:4.lie.in.wait.for -NARR | EAGLE
Then now, he (CoW) lay in wait for him there [where he said he sat]. | 3___________________________________ O2(b)
| |
055 nágo, […] dóshoodó godihⁿdí -náʔa. | |
and […] very.great there.is.noise -NARR | |
Then, there is a great noise [where he is swooping back]. | |
| |
056 ʔįį -shí ̨, […] dahneesjí ̨ -náʔa. | 3___________________________________ S(Ø)
here -from […] 3.perch -NARR | |
Here, [where he usually sat] he (male eagle) perched. | |
| |
057 ʔit’ago biłkégozįį -da -go, | 3___________________________________ S2(bi) (psych subj)
still 3:4.knowledge.of.occurs.with -even -SUB | |
Even before noticing him (eagle noticing CoW), 4______________________________________________ O2(k)
| | AXE
058 […] tségheʔsiʔá ̨ -í beejiisⁿdii -náʔa. 4______________________________________________ S(ji) […] stone.axe -REL 3:3:4.hit.with -NARR | 3___________________________________ O1(Ø) [On the side of his head] he (CoW) hit him with an axe. | | 3________________ O2(b) AXE
| |
Where does he usually sit?
059 ʔisdaʔ ʔibéidzóółⁿdia -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(i)
down 3:4.knock.off -NARR | |
He (CoW) knocked him off. | 3_________________________________________ O2(b)
| aji-, fourth person subject, has an allomorph i- before prefixes dzi- or ji-.
|
060 nágo ʔá -ń bizá ̨á ̨yé -ń nááhíshdiłki -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(sh) and that -REL little.one -REL 3:4.ask.again -NARR | YOUNGEST
Then he (CoW) asks the little one again. | 3______________________________ O1(Ø) THAT LITTLE
| | ONE
061
| |
062 biłjiⁿdí -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.say.to -NARR | |
he (CoW) says to him. | 3______________________________ O2(bi)
| |
063 064
| |
065 goołⁿdí -náʔa. | 3______________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.say.to -NARR | |
he says to him. 4____________________________________________________ O2(go)
| |
067
| |
068 náábiłjidihⁿdí -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.say.to.again -NARR | |
he says to him again. | 3______________________________ O2(bi)
| |
Now when is your mother returning?
When the female rain begins to come…, she is returning
069
| |
070 goołⁿdí -náʔa. | 3_________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.say.to -NARR |
he says to him. 4_______________________________________________ O2(go)
|
071 ʔákoo ʔáshí ̨ bánáájiyeedzá -náʔa. 4______________________________________________ S(ji)
then there 3:4.lie.in.wait.for.again -NARR | FEMALE
Then there he lay in wait for her also. | 3___________________________________ O2(b)
| |
072 ko -shí ̨ hogo hiiłts’a -náʔa. | 3___________________________________ S(Ø)
place.near -from 3.swoop noise.is.heard -NARR | |
There is heard the noise of her flying, | |
| |
073 dahnłjí ̨ -zhį hogo -náʔa. | 3___________________________________ S(Ø)
3.usually.perch -to 3.swoop -NARR | |
She is swooping to her perch. | |
| |
074 ʔit’ago biłkégozįį -da -go, | 3___________________________________ S2(bi) (psych subj)
still 3:4.knowledge.of.occurs.with -even -SUB | |
Even before she notices him, 4______________________________________________ O2(k)
| |
075 bíńtł’ah -yáb náájiisⁿdii -náʔa. 4______________________________________________ S(ji)
3.side.of.head -MKR 3:4.hit.again -NARR | |
he hit her on the side of her head. | 3___________________________________ O1(Ø)
| |
b Hoijer says of -yá that it indicates “the relation between the verb following” and the phrase it marks (Hoijer 1938:86). No more precise meaning of this
postposition is given. It is generally locative but may also be manner.
| |
076 ʔisdaʔ ʔibéidzóółⁿdi -náʔa. 4______________________________________________ S(i)
down 3:4.knock.off -NARR | |
He knocked her off. | 3___________________________________ O2(b)
| |
077 jiyeesxí ̨ -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.kill.sg -NARR | |
He killed her. | 3_________________________________________ O1(Ø)
|
078 ʔákoo ʔá -ń bizá ̨á ̨yé -ń, ʔinájiisįįn -ń, 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
then that -REL little.one -REL 3:4.leave.alone -REL | YOUNGEST
ʔáałjiⁿdí -náʔa: | 3______________________________ O2(a) THAT
3:4.say.so.to -NARR | | LITTLE
Then he (CoW) speaks to the little one he spared: | | ONE
| | SPARED
079
| |
080 biłjiⁿdí -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.say.to -NARR | |
he (CoW) says to him. | 3______________________________ O2(bi)
| |
081 ʔákoo ʔáńdee -da hanyaa nágodeesgí ̨ -náʔa. | 3______________________________ S(Ø)
then now -even down.below 4:3.begin.to.carry.again -NARR | |
So then he began to carry him (CoW) down again. 4____________________________________________________ O1(go)
| |
082 ʔisdaʔ nágagí ̨ -náʔa. | 3______________________________ S(Ø)
down 4:3.carry.again -NARR | |
He carried him (CoW) down again. 4____________________________________________________ O1(g)
| |
083 ʔákaa ʔiłdǫ́ bitsii jiisⁿdii -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
there also 3.head 3:4.hit -NARR | | HEAD
There he (CoW) hit his head also. | 3______________________________ Ps(bi)
| | 3___________________ O1(Ø) HEAD
| | (little
| | one’s)
084 jiyeesxí ̨ -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.kill.sg -NARR | |
He killed him. | 3______________________________ O1(Ø)
|
085 ʔákoo bit’a -í baahajiyaⁿdish -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
then 3.feathers -REL 3:3:4.pull.out.of -NARR | EAGLES FEATHERS
Then he (CoW) is pulling out of them their (bi-) feathers. | 3_________________________________________ Ps(bi)
| | 3___________________ O1(Ø) FEATHERS
| | | (eagles’)
| 3_________________________________________ O2(b)
| |
086
| |
087 jiⁿdí -go 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
4.say -SUB | |
he saying | |
| |
088 ʔiłch’á ̨go ʔijiⁿdííł -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
in.all.directions 3:4.scatter -NARR | |
he scatters them (feathers) in all directions. | 3___________________ O1(Ø)
| BIRDS
089 ʔá -í bik’eh -go ʔizháshee ʔiłʔango | 3_______DISTR___________________________ S(Ø) DIFF’NT BIRDS that -REL 3.by.reason.of -SUB birds different |
ʔádaat’é -í gooslí ̨ -náʔa. |
3.DISTR.be.so -REL 3.be.born -NARR |
By that were created all the different birds. |
|
090 ʔáshí ̨ gomá -ń baanáájidzá -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
then 4.mother -REL 3:4.go.to.again -NARR | MOTHER
Then he (CoW) went to his (go-) mother again. 4____________________________________________________ Ps(go)
| 3_________________________________________ O2(b) MOTHER
| | (CoW’s)
091
Let them become (all kinds of) birds!
| |
092 biłjiⁿdí -náʔa. 4___________________________________________________ S(ji)
3:4.say.to -NARR | |
he says to her. | 3________________________________________ O2(bi)
| |
093 nágo gomá -ń kaaʔiłéńzį -náʔa. 4___________________________________________________ Ps(go)
and 4.mother -REL SIT:3.be.happy.about -NARR | 3________________________________________ S(Ø) MOTHER
And his (go-) mother is happy about it (k-, SIT = situational). | | (CoW’s)
094
| |
095 goołⁿdí -náʔa. | 3________________________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.say.to -NARR |
she says to him. 4___________________________________________________ O2(go)
Clause 095 is the end of the narrative.
This long passage has been chosen to illustrate the fact that continuous fourth person tracking may extend over a long span of narrative without any third person coding of the fourth-person-tracked participant—Child of the Water in this particular case. The pronominal which codes Child of the Water in the passage above is fourth person in every case, whatever the grammatical function of the pronominal—subject, direct (clauses 081 and 082) or postpositional object, or possessor (clauses 090 and 093).
There may be interludes in which no reference is made to the fourth-person-tracked participant, as in clauses 055–056 and 072–073 (when attention is directed towards the male eagle and the female eagle respectively)—and these interludes can run to several clauses. Since there is no mention of the fourth-person-tracked participant in them (and therefore they contain no third person coding of the fourth-person-tracked
participant), they do not constitute an interruption of the fourth person tracking.
The passage (24) illustrates the additional characteristic of fourth person tracking that coding of any of the participants is minimal. NP-coding in (24) chiefly occurs with the introduction and reintroduction of participants (of the little one in clauses 060 and 078 and Child of the Water’s mother in clause 090); the male and female eagles are introduced in quotes and are not NP-coded outside them.
When fourth person coding of a participant occurs outside blocks of continuous fourth person tracking (which may be of a participant elsewhere fourth-person-tracked or of some other participant), there must be some explanation of the coding other than fourth person tracking and the explanation of most of the cases of such fourth person coding is discussed in sections 4 and 5.
3.2 Termination of fourth person tracking
If a participant, fourth-person-coded in one clause (whether fourth person tracking is in operation or not, and whether the fourth person pronominal is subject, object, or possessor), is third-person-coded in the next clause which has reference to that participant, then it is almost invariably the case that there is an NP coindexed with the third person pronominal. A corollary is that, if a fourth-person-tracked participant does
not move offstage, then termination of the fourth person tracking is by NP-coding. (The participant moves offstage when the end of the narrative is reached or when there is no reference to the participant in the immediately following sentences.)
For example, in Kenoi’s “Coyote Dances With the Prairie Dogs”, Coyote has been urging the prairie dogs to build fires for a ceremony to celebrate his (fictitious) victory over their enemies:
(25) COYOTE PRAIRIE.DOG
| |
034 daaʔjizhish -náʔa. | 4_____ DISTR _______ S(ji)
4.DISTR.dance -NARR | |
They dance. | |
| |
035 maʔye -í ʔádaagoołⁿdi -náʔa: 3__________________________________________ S(Ø) COYOTE
Coyote -REL 4:3.DISTR.say.so.to -NARR | |
Coyote speaks to them: | 4____ DISTR ________ O2(go)
| |
036
| |
041 dlǫ́í -í daayiiłⁿdi -náʔa. 3__________________________________________ S(Ø)
prairie.dog -REL 3':3.DISTR.say.to -NARR | |
he says to the prairie dogs. | 3'____ DISTR _______ O2(yi) PDOG
| |
The prairie dogs are fourth-person-tracked in clauses 034 and 035, but third-person-coded in the clause in which they are next mentioned (the non-quote clause, clause 041), and there is an NP in the clause coindexed with the object pronominal coding the prairie dogs. The NP-coding in clause 041 terminates the fourth person tracking of the prairie dogs and they are third-person-coded in the immediately following clauses.
There are, however, occasions when the fourth-person-tracked participant is third-person-coded and one would wish to say that fourth person tracking is suspended, not terminated. Such third person coding of the fourth-person-tracked participant occurs quite infrequently and for certain reasons (to be detailed in the next section and its subsections).
3.3 Suspension of fourth person coding in fourth person tracking
Section 3.3 and subsections substantiate the fact that normally third person coding of a fourth-person-tracked participant terminates the fourth person tracking by categorising the cases in which it does not.
3.3.1 For the removal of ambiguity
A one-time NP-coding of a fourth-person-tracked participant occurs most commonly when an NP is used to remove ambiguity. Given that the narrator chooses to use an NP, a temporary change from fourth-person to third person coding is prompted by the fact that a fourth person pronominal normally excludes a coindexed NP (similarly Müller 2002:57). Two cases occur in Mithlo’s narrative “Coyote Obtains Fire”: a fourth person subject pronominal ji- initiates fourth person tracking of, first, the flies and, later, the tracking of Coyote. However, evidently the narrator felt that the identities of the referents of these fourth person pronominals were open to misunderstanding and one-clause sentences are inserted:
tł’ízhe-í, ʔá-í ʔádaat’ı̨́ ‘the flies, those are (do) so’ (that is, it is they who are lined up around Coyote) and maʔye-ń ʔát’ı̨́ ‘Coyote is (does) so’ (the shaded clause 036 in passage (26) below) (that is, it is Coyote who is running around, clause 035). The immediately following clauses take up the fourth person tracking again:
(26) COYOTE FLIES FIRE
| | |
029 kát’é -go, kǫǫ gooslí ̨ -náʔa. | | 3___________________ S(Ø) FIRE
3.be.so -SUB fire 3.be.born -NARR | |
In this way, fire came into existence. | |
| |
030 ʔákoo ʔá -ń maʔye -ń k’eedaashnⁿdii. | 4____DISTR _________________ S(sh)
then that -REL coyote -REL 3:4.DISTR.hate | |
Then they hate that Coyote. 3____________________________________________________ O1(Ø) THAT COYOYE
| |
031 ʔákoo ʔádaałjiⁿdí -náʔa: | 4____DISTR _________________ S(ji)
then 3:4.DISTR.say.so.to -NARR | |
And they speak to him: 3____________________________________________________ O2(a)
| |
032
| |
033 daabiłjiⁿdí -náʔa. | 4____DISTR _________________ S(ji)
3:4.DISTR.say.to -NARR |
they say to him. 3____________________________________________________ O2(bi)
| WORLD
034 ʔá -í dá- ʔághádzaa -náʔa. | 3_________________________________________ S(Ø) THOSE (stones, etc.)
that -REL even- 3.happen.so -NARR | |
It happened to those (stones, etc.) exactly so. | |
| |
035 ʔákoo naanájinago -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
then 4.run.round&round -NARR | |
Then he is running round and round. | |
| |
036 maʔye -ń ʔát’í ̨ -náʔa. 3____________________________________________________ S(Ø) COYOTE
coyote -REL 3.be.so -NARR | |
Coyote is (does) so. | |
| |
037 dí -í díík’eh gołndoo. | 3_________________________________________ S(Ø) THESE ALL
this -REL all 4:3.become.hot.with |
All these became hot for him. 4____________________________________________________ S2(go) (psych subj) |
038 ʔíbąą ch’éda ʔijiłghee -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
therefore in.vain 4.run.away -NARR |
Therefore in vain he runs away. |
| WATER
039 tó siká ̨ -náʔa. | 3______________________________ S(Ø) WATER
water 3.be.lying -NARR | |
A (pond of) water lies there. | |
| |
040
| |
041 jiⁿdí -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
4.say -NARR | |
he says. | |
| |
042 ʔákoo tó siká ̨ -í bighee -zhî 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
then water 3.be.lying -REL 3.inside -to | |
yaanájiiłgho -náʔa. | 3______________________________ Ps(bi) WATER INSIDE.TO
4.jump.up -NARR | |
In Kenoi’s “The First Mountain Spirit Ceremony”, a man who knew about mountain spirits proposes to make mountain spirits for the Indians (that is, to decorate some of their number to represent mountain spirits):
(27) MAN INDIANS
| |
015 nágo ʔádí -ń ⁿdé -ń […], 3____________________________________________________ S(Ø) THIS MAN
and this -REL man -REL […] | |
goch’įįyánáádaałti -náʔa. | 4____DISTR _________________ O2(go)
4:3.DISTR.speak.again.toward -NARR | |
Then this man [he who was going to make (people into) | | the mountain spirits for them], again talks to them. | |
| |
016 ʔádaagoołⁿdí -náʔa: 3____________________________________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.DISTR.say.so.to -NARR | |
He speaks to them: | 4____DISTR _________________ O2(go)
| |
017
| |
018 daagoołⁿdí -náʔa. 3____________________________________________________ S(Ø)
4:3.DISTR.say.to -NARR | |
he says to them. | 4____DISTR _________________ O2(go)
| |
019 gózhǫ́go, […] beegoch’adaagojiischí ̨ -náʔa. 4____________________________________________________ S(ji)
in.a.good.way […] 3:4:4.DISTR.make.known.to -NARR | |
In a good way, [in exactly that way,] he informed them. | 4____DISTR _________________ O2(go)
| |
020 ʔá -ń ⁿdé -ń […] yeekaadaohⁿdii -náʔa. 3____________________________________________________ S(Ø) THAT MAN
that -REL man -REL […] 3':4:3.DISTR.advise -NARR | |
That man [who is making (people into) mountain spirits] | 4____DISTR _________________ O2(k)
advised them. | |
| |
