Child of the Water is initiated in clause 065 in which Child of the Water is agent and is fourth-person-coded, and Giant, the non-agent, is third- person-coded, and a sequence of non-quotatives in which any mention of the non-agent is fourth-person-coded is broken.
4.2 Characteristics of fourth person reference-switching
In the passages in section 4.1 then, when there is a reversal of roles between the two major participants in two successive same-non-agent units, the reference of any fourth person object pronominal go- that may be present has switched to the other participant in the second same-non-agent
unit; consider for example the reference of go- in clauses 072 and 075, or 075 and 079 in passage 52, or 085 and 086 in passage 53 above. The phenomenon will be called fourth person reference-switching. The reference of any third person object pronominal yi- also switches in the
passages in section 4.1.
Note that the succession of fourth person object pronominals go- in clauses 117–125 of “The Killing of the Giant”, passage 54, has the appearance of fourth person tracking but the tracking is only within this one unit in which Giant is non-agent throughout and so it is not fourth
person tracking in any significant sense. Continuous fourth person tracking can be in operation when only one participant is onstage but, when fourth person reference-switching is
present, there must be two participants onstage, the non-agent participant potentially coded by the fourth person object pronominal go- in post- quotatives and non-quotatives. In these interactions between two participants, a fourth-person-coded addresseenon-agent becomes the third-
person-coded speakeragent in the next same-non-agent unit. The fourth person subject pronominal ji- does not occur when there is fourth person reference-switching.
The new third-person-coded speakeragent is coindexed with an NP which, of course, will be a subject NP at first mention in the new same-non-agent unit see, for example, clauses 101, 105, 109, 111, and 117 in “The Killing of the Giant” in passage 54. This is to be expected
since, when the point of view is alternating and the verb forms are yi-Ø-V or go-Ø-V, never bi-Ø-V, there is no yi-bi- alternation which would be diagnostic of which participant was speaker and which addressee. In this case, there is no exception to the fact stated in section 3.2 that, if a
participant fourth-person-coded in one clause is third-person-coded in the next clause which has reference to that participant, it is usually the case that there is an NP coindexed with the third person pronominal.
When all same-non-agent units in Mithlo’s narratives are studied in which the pre-quotative sNP oNP yi-Ø-V occurs, the point of view alternating between the participants, the following are the canonical forms found the ‘bare bones’ of the clauses:
55 pre-quotatives sNP
oNP yi-Ø-V,
occasionally reduced to sNP post-quotatives
oNP yi-Ø-V
or, go-Ø-V
non-quotatives sNP
go-Ø-V; sNP occurs if the clause is initial to the unit
Canonically it appears that a non-quotative verb form go-Ø-V is not found following a post-quotative verb form yi-Ø-V in the same-non-agent unit, only following a post-quotative verb form go-Ø-V. There is one case in which the sequence is found, clauses 012–013, contained in the
anomalous passage 34, discussed in section 3.5. No non-quotative verb form yi-Ø-V has been found following post-quotative yi-Ø-V or go-Ø-V in the same-non-agent unit.
While fourth person reference-switching occurs most frequently in same-non-agent units which contain quotes, it has been seen that there can also be same-non-agent units in which there is fourth person reference-switching but in which there is no quote and all the clauses are non-
quotative. The examples were contained in passages 51, 53, and 54. The choice between the two alternatives for post-quotatives will be discussed below in section 4.4.
In comparison with continuous fourth person tracking see section 3, NP are more frequent when fourth person reference-switching is present.
4.3 Contiguous fourth person tracking and reference-switching
