Participant introductions Post introduction references

material. It is unclear how to code the referential forms in the clause, and they can involve a different mental space. If part of them do involve a different mental space and part of them do not, the decisions on which to include and which to exclude could prove to be unmanageable. The reason for excluding coordinate noun phrases rests entirely on the coding issue. If one referent is encoded within a coordi- nate noun phrase by a noun and another referent is encoded within the noun phrase by an affix the two forms are inherently different but could both be coded by calling the occurrence a coordinate noun phrase. While the answer to the questions of proper coding are solvable, and the theoretical issues re- volving around quotations and subordinate clauses, need to be resolved, that resolution is not needed to determine the best model among those under consideration. While quotations, subordinate clauses, and coordinate noun phrases are not examined in this study, they are included in counts for referential distance and topic persistence. Table 5.1. Initial introduction referential forms and the number of their occurrences Form Occurrences Form Occurrences zero 7 noun phrase and verb affix 54 verb affix 17 name 8 pronoun 12 name and verb affix 11 pronoun and verb affix 15 quote 25 noun 38 subordinate clause 24 noun and verb affix 12 coordinate NPs 26 noun phrase 46 Total 333 Table 5.2. Post introduction referential forms and the number of their occurrences Form Occurrences Form Occurrences zero 152 noun phrase and verb affix 35 verb affix 648 name 13 pronoun 65 name and verb affix 23 pronoun and verb affix 123 quote 42 noun 36 subordinate clause 37 noun and verb affix 34 coordinate NPs 30 noun phrase 32 Total 1270

5.2.1 Participant introductions

Certain facts are readily discernible from table 5.1. There are 333 referents in the texts; the majority of them, 280, are introduced by some form that is specific, such as a name or a noun phrase. The re- maining fifty-three are initially specified with either a pronominal form, verb affix or zero. Given that table 5.1 includes first-person referents, most of the models of reference management would predict that all the minimal forms must be first-person referents. This would allow them to claim that since first-person referents are always available in the speech situation, then their model, be it recency, epi- sodes or memorial activation does not have to account for them. However, thirty-five of the fifty-three are third-person referents, and all the models, to be adequate, have to account for them. 74 Results and Analysis

5.2.2 Post introduction references

The most common form of reference in Olo is by verbal affix. This behavior is not unexpected, and it is easily accounted for by the different models. They would all predict a preponderance of minimal forms. Given that discourses are continuous streams of coherent speech, the different models predict that once a referent was referred to by a minimal form, that form would continue until some outside force caused the use of a more fully specified form. For the recency model, this would be absence from the register. Episode models claim the episode boundary is the outside force. The memorial activation model claims that it is the drop in activation, caused by episode boundaries as well as other possible phenomena. Goal Oriented Activation agrees that it is expected that minimal forms would be the most common, since a referent is referred to by a minimal form only when the activation level of the refer- ent is what the speaker wants to meet his ongoing goals. Anything that changes the balance of activa- tion levels among participants or lowers overall activation would cause the speaker to adjust the activation levels by using a more specific form. There were 648 occurrences where verbal affixes were the only morphological form used to refer to the participant. This class makes up 51 percent of the referential forms cited in table 5.2. When com- bined with zero forms, we find that minimal referential devices make up 63 percent of the referential forms after initial introduction. This proportion is close to that found by Payne 1993 where he re- ports devices of this type make up roughly 67 percent of the referential forms in Yagua. When the ver- bal affixes and zero are combined with pronominal forms, the figure in Olo climbs to 77.8 percent. Since the majority of the stories in the database in this study are first-person narratives, it is possible that these figures could be unduly biased by first-person referents. However, this is not the case. While the numbers are lower, the combination of zero reference and verbal affixes still accounts for 61 per- cent of all referential forms. The figures for just third-person post introduction referential forms are given in table 5.3. Table 5.3. Third-person post introduction referential forms Form Occurrences Form Occurrences zero 107 noun phrase and verb affix 34 verb affix 414 name 13 pronoun 37 name and verb affix 23 pronoun and verb affix 53 quote 34 noun 36 subordinate clause 26 noun and verb affix 34 coordinate NPs 21 noun phrase 29 Total 861 The percentage of nonfully specified forms rises to 71 percent when the pronouns and pronoun plus verbal affix are added. These “pronominal forms” are much more frequent than the more fully speci- fied “nominal” forms. This is expected, and all the different models easily account for this behavior.

5.3 Referential Distance