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 oNP yi-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 Morgans paradigms show]. Thus: … bi níłdaah, youre 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 concerning both oblique postpositional and direct objects in the language family to set up their basic clause
structure. Oblique and direct object positions are conflated in the structure though it is not the case that oblique and direct objects are always syntactically equivalent. General statements may need to be qualified. In Kaska, for
example, third person pronominal direct objects are invariably y- and third person postpositional objects are invariably b- as Rice and Saxon note ibid. 739; O’Donnell 2004. In Gwich’in, vi-, the b- cognate, is never a direct
object Thompson 1996:85. In Dena’ina also, there is the restriction that the direct object but not the
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 sNP bi-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 oNP yi-Ø-V and oNP sNP bi-Ø-V clauses, cases of both oNP sNP yi-Ø-V and sNP oNP bi-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
