22 104
a
sNP oNP bi-Ø-V These mountain spirits are valuable to the Indians.
105 sNP Ø-V
The Indians worship them. 106
“They live in the sacred mountains,” 107 sNP
Ø-V the Indians say.
108 oNP bi-Ø-V
They the mountain spirits talk to those Indians who know about mountain spirits.
a
Hoijer’s translation of díídíí gą́hé-í ⁿdé biłʔílí-náʔa in clause 104 is ‘the Indians respected the mountain
spirits’; ‘these mountain spirits were [valuable] with the Indians’ is a more word-for-word translation. The verb is a ‘psych’ verb of a type in which there is no yi-bi- choice Jelinek Willie 1996:27.
The whole narrative is clearly about the mountain spirits but in the Coda the Indians are a secondary topic. In clause 108 the Indians of the past are coded by proximate bi- rather than obviative yi- in the
structure oNP bi-Ø-V, drawing attention to the surprising fact that the mountain spirits talked to the oldtimers, because today as the narrator says, “they do not talk to us [and] therefore you will not
believe” that they used to.
For a final example of sNP oNP bi-Ø-V, consider the following quote in Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Money Tree”. Coyote has fooled two white men and has driven off with their pack train. They go after
him and ask in the coyote town: 23
ʔįįshí ̨ łaʔ -
ń xééł
hiłʔinayoł -
ń [doo
xaaóóʔí ̨ -da
] here
that.one -
REL
pack 3:
INDEF
:3.drive -
REL
[
NEG
2s.see.someone -
NEG
] sNP
oNP bi-Ø-V
“[You don’t see] anyone here driving a pack train?” The feature distinguishing the person the two white men are looking for is that he is driving a pack train.
hi- bi- in xééł hiłʔinayoł ‘he is driving animals; ʔ- ‘
INDEF
’ with packs’ is coindexed with xééł ‘pack’
and probably draws attention to this fact.
2.2 The fourth person pronominals
The fourth person pronominals, subject ji- and object go-, have reference to human or personified entities. Both generally exclude a coindexed NP see, for example, Willie 2000b:378.
The fourth person may function as impersonalunspecified, both in Navajo Young Morgan 1987:76f and in Apache, and can be found in narrative in that function see section 6. For non-
narrative uses of the fourth person, see, for example, Willie 1991, chapter 4; the present paper will centre on the use of the fourth person in narrative.
The phenomenon of fourth person tracking in narrative is well-known in Navajo Akmajian Anderson 1970:5, Young Morgan 1987:9, 76f and occurs in Chiricahua Apache also as will be shown.
In fourth person tracking, one participant is tracked by pronominals which are fourth person, whatever the grammatical function of the pronominal, whether subject, object, or possessor, across any changes in
participant orientation. However, there is another major usage of fourth person in Hoijer’s Chiricahua Apache texts which is to be documented below also. These, and other features of the fourth person
pronominals, will be discussed in the following sections sections 3 to 6.
3 Fourth person tracking
Willie remarks: “Since Navajo has fourth person forms, which are used to mark obviation [= disjoint reference, not obviation in the Algonquian sense], there seems to be less reliance on yi-bi- for this
purpose” Willie 1991:216. For section 2.1.2 above concerning the yi-bi- alternation, it was, in fact, quite difficult to find adequate examples which contained no fourth person forms.
For the most part, it is only in the Apachean languages that a fourth person is found that in one of its usages denotes a specific non-Speech-Act Participant non-SAP that is, one that, like the third
person, is not a first or second person speech-act participant.
19
Young and Morgan say of the fourth person called by them the third person alternate 3a: “In narratives, the 3a pronoun serves to
distinguish between two 3rd persons, and is usually applied to the main character along with any other figure who gains prominence at some point in the story more than one character may thus be
represented by the 3a pronoun at some point” 1987:9.
Aissen says, “This [fourth person coding] permits continual reference [italics mine] to the main character…” Aissen 2000:147. Whether by ‘continual’ is meant ‘frequently occurring’ or ‘without
interruption’, there is a sense in which both are true. Fourth person tracking is continuous, or ‘without interruption’, when, in a narrative block, any coding of one participant is always fourth person and never
third, and this is the sense in which the term ‘fourth person tracking’ will be understood in this paper. However, there is a sense in which fourth person tracking may be continual or ‘frequently occurring’.
When a narrative contains more than one block in which there is continuous fourth person tracking, at least in Mithlo’s narratives it is generally the case that it is the same participant that is fourth-person-
tracked in each block.
Continuously fourth-person-tracked participants are typically individuals, but may also be a plurality such as ‘the Indians’ when the denotation is sufficiently precise in context. Other fourth-person-
tracked pluralities include the two white men in Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Money Tree” and, in Kenoi’s “The Foolish People Acquire Coffee”, the Foolish People.
3.1 Continuous fourth person tracking illustrated
