157
before a confrontational speech act.
41
In example 190, Jii-Mpoon returns home from secretly following her sister. The mother, who is the addressee, is made explicit. In the
ensuing speech, Jii-Mpoon tattles to her mother about Jii-Mlii’s activities and suggests that the mother should scold Jii-Mlii.
190 K +
HHHH tell
to DET mother 3S.POSS DEM.up
‘Jii-Mpoon told her mother up there, “quote.” ’ [Fish 91]
One other interesting example of over-coding before a confrontational speech act occurs when Jii-Mlii finally wins the argument about keeping the fish. At the start of the
argument, the sisters are referenced as + ‘younger sibling’ and + ‘older sister’. Later
in the argument, the referring expression changes with the addition of the determiner + ‘the younger sibling’ and
+ ‘the older sister’. Finally, in the quote formula before Jii-Mlii ends the argument, the referring expression is even more heavily coded with the
determiner and the addition of a possessor 191. 191 +
+ ++
+ +
after that DET sib.young 3S.POSS say ‘After that her younger sister said...’
[Fish 58]
8.3.5 Locally contrastive L
Another discourse operation that warrants more coding is a locally contrastive participant. In the Cow story, as the conflict between the two cattle owners rises, the
41
When an addressee is made explicit because it precedes a confrontational speech act, this sometimes overlaps with the discourse operation Restaging. Four of the explicit addressees in the Fish story fit both categories of
Confrontation and Restaging.
158
narrator makes explicit references to both participants in the subject and object positions 192.
192 +
3S REL graze cow female have matter worry about
3S REL graze cow
male ‘The one who grazed the cow had concerns about the one who grazed the bull.’
[Cow 16]
In the Fish story, the older sister is the established topic in the three clauses prior to example 193, so a zero or a pronoun would have been sufficient for the subject slot.
However, the narrator wants to emphasize the contrast between the older sister’s surreptitious activities and the younger sister’s acts of kindness.
193 +
+ +
+ +
++ +
DET sis.old 3S.POSS DEM3 former see all of
+ ++
+ sib.young 3S.POSS drop fish in water DEM3
‘Her older sister had seen everything—her younger sister dropping the fish in the water there.’
[Fish 89] In the pre-peak 2 episode of the Fish story, the narrator clearly draws the
distinction between the older ‘bad’ sister versus the younger ‘good’ sister.
42
Within this episode, the hierarchy of participants is mirrored in the referring expression for these two
sisters. In general, the older sister is referenced with +
‘her older sister’, totaling eight occurrences. On the other hand, references to Jii-Mlii contain only one
42
This explanation overlaps with the idea of a global VIP Jii-Mlii coded less and the older sister more heavily coded.
159
instance of the kinship term +
‘her younger sister’. In four other references to Jii-Mlii, the referring expression is a pronoun. Example 194 illustrates Jii-Mlii is
referred to in the first clause with a pronoun followed by her older sister referred to with a kinship term anchored to Jii-Mlii.
194 + after that 3S
DEM3 return ‘After that she Jii-Mlii returned home.’
+ +
+ +
+ ++
+ +
DET sis.old 3S.POSS DEM3 former walk.behind steal from behind ‘Her older sister walked behind.’ [Fish 142-3]
8.3.6 Boundary marking B
