gender and number. The claim is that the more specific a referential form is, the greater will its positive effect be on the activation of its referent and the greater its negative effect be on all other
referents.
3.4.1 The environmental view versus speaker control
Three of the current models of referential management treat the choice of referential form as one solely based on the preceding environment. This environmentally conditioned choice of referential
form is deterministic. It searches for necessary and sufficient conditions that require a given form. It asks the question, “What has occurred so far in the discourse or in the real world that causes a particu-
lar choice of reference form?” The asking of this question is particularly problematic because of the as- sumptions it makes. It assumes that only what has occurred so far in the discourse or within the
knowledge of the speech act participants has any bearing on the referential choice. It ignores any view of a discourse as an unfolding mutually negotiated dialogue. Rather than asking what has happened
that forces this form, it would be better to ask “What has occurred so far in the discourse or in the real world that allows a particular choice of reference form?”
Communicators have certain goals and ideas, and they structure their communication to reach them. The structures that they build are not arbitrary nor are they required by what has previously oc-
curred in the communication. In Clancy’s analysis of the Pear Films 1980, she found that individual speakers displayed a wide range of latitude in their choice of referential form. In one episode one es-
tablished character meets three others. The single character is in his last episode, and the other charac- ters will continue on until the end of the film. At this point different speakers made different choices
about using pronouns to mark prominence and point of view. Some opted for the single character and others opted for the new characters. Those opting to adopt the viewpoint of the new characters could
not base their decision on past importance, but had to be building for future importance. This same ef- fect is reported by Perrin 1978 in Mambila. There three referents had been introduced as secondary
participants, and then one was chosen as the primary participant and referred to with a zero. This was not because of past relevance, but rather showed the importance the participant was to have in the rest
of the story. Payne 1993 has shown that in Yagua, references that do not include a verbal affix persist half as long as those where the equivalent device is used in conjunction with a verbal affix. The choice
then becomes based not on activation to this point, but rather intended persistence from this point on- ward in the texts.
3.4.2 Referential form as instructions to the comprehender
