152 L+
L+ L+
L+ king
Sihanouk out ‘During that fighting period, Lon Nol worked to depose King Sihanouk.’ [Life 8]
The first mention of Pol Pot occurs preverbally, but indirectly with a pronoun + emphatic pronoun 182. The connotation of this referring expression is ‘leader’ of the
Khmer Rouge who are introduced in the previous clause, given in 175 above. 182 +
+ +
after that 3S EMPH rule grasp head villager forest land +
9 U
:W EXIST 3 year 8 month 20 day
‘After that the leader domineered over the heads of the people of the land for 3 years, 8 months and 20 days.’
[Life 11]
8.3.2 Routine tracking T
The discourse operation routine tracking T corresponds to most of the default codings given for the Sequential Default method discussed in Chapter 7. While the
Sequential Default method takes a close look at participant reference, I take a more global perspective of participant reference tracking within a paragraph. A participant is
established as the discourse topic, usually by being introduced postverbally and then further references to this participant are zero in the subject slot until a new participant or
prop becomes the new topic. This creates a topic chain. Within a paragraph where the topic stays the same, there may be a minor discontinuity such as a change of event or
time or a change from background to foregrounded information. At these breaks, a topic may be coded with a pronoun, which signals this break, but still maintains topic
continuity. Example 183 illustrates the cow owner in the subject slot as topic. The next
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clause references him with a zero and then the third clause uses a pronoun. The adverbial phrase and the pronoun both indicate a change in the third clause, which in this case is a
change of time in the sequence of events. 183
3S REL graze cow female distract with worry
‘The one who grazed the cow was distracted with worry.’ K
K K
K +
almost NEG have elder discuss ‘He almost did not get an elder to help discuss the problem.’
+ +
+ after that 3S awake from morning
‘After that he woke up in the morning.’ [Cow 67-9]
8.3.3 Restaging R
Restaging, another discourse operation, re-introduces a participant who is new to a scene after an absence. Given the constraints of a topic-prominent language, the
majority of the restaged participants occur postverbally, after which they can then be established as the topic.
The Cow story contains only three occurrences of a restaged participant. In every instance, the restaged participant occurs postverbally with a verb of motion or with a
speech verb in a quote formula. Within the Fish story, 22 participants are restaged. Of these 22 instances, 86
1922 occur in postverbal constructions. This postverbal construction involves some type of motion verb 11 instances, involves a verb of perception or emotion 2
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instances, or is the addressee given in a quote formula 6 instances. In example 184, Jii-Mlii is being restaged postverbally with a motion verb.
184 +
+ arrive
return DET sib.young 3S.POSS from DEM3 ‘From there, her younger sister arrived home’
[Fish 306] In the Fish story, regarding the type of referring expression for restaged
participants, seven are proper names and six are kinship terms for participants whose names are never revealed, e.g. mother of Jii-Mlii. Other referring expressions used are
kinship terms that are unambiguous from the context, e.g. ‘her younger sibling’. For the Cow
story, both a pronoun + relative clause and a kinship term + relative clause are used for the bull owner and the noun ‘rabbit’ is used for Rabbit. Each referring expression
makes the restaged participant unambiguous. Example 185 illustrates Smelt-fish’s mother being restaged and then the next clause where she is topical. The subject in the
second clause is explicit because it is an initiating utterance cf. §8.3.8. 185
HHHH sound
arrive mother bachelor fish DEM3
‘The sound reached Bachelor Fish’s mom.’ HHHH
+ K
DET mother bachelor fish DEM3 say ’The mother of Bachelor Fish said to him...’ [Fish 282-3]
8.3.4 Confrontation C
