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referent is coded. Finally, the cognitive science approach represents the ‘fourth dimension’ of factors that inform referring expression choice. Chafe 1976, Prince
1981, van Dijk and Kintsch 1983, Gundel et al. 1993, and Lambrecht 1994 were interested in what was in the minds of the speaker and hearer at the time of utterance and
how the speaker signals certain information to the hearer with language specific grammatical features. Van Dijk and Kintsch 1983:72 give four assumptions regarding
the processing features of utterances: 1 language users have a limited memory, 2 they cannot process many different kinds of information at the same time, 3 production and
understanding of utterances is linear, and 4 other factors beyond linguistic information are required for understanding, e.g. context, knowledge of the world, etc.
While many methods exist on how to track participant reference, no one approach will uncover all of the strategies a speaker has at his disposal when choosing a referent
form. Therefore, a multi-strategy approach is used to discover the nuances of participant reference for the language studied. The methodologies given by Dooley and Levinsohn
2001, Longacre 1995, Lambrecht 1994, and Gundel et al. 1993, all contribute to the tools used for analysis in this study.
1.4 Limitations
This study focuses on three narrative texts to observe the participant reference system. Two of the texts are third person narrative folk tales given by different narrators,
one 572 clauses and the other, 156 clauses. The third text is a first person biographical account consisting of 21 clauses. After analyzing these three texts, I briefly compared
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with eight other available narrative texts to determine the types of referring expressions used by the narrator and some factors that influence choosing one particular type over
another. During the time of this study, no Bunong speakers were present with which to
verify conclusions; however, several speakers of the language were within calling reach. I am further limited by my own judgments, especially in the area of determining
information status. In this area I am projecting what I think a typical Bunong speaker would know. These judgments are based on prior conversations and having lived and
done linguistic research and language development work in a Bunong community for three and a half years. However, they are still my opinions.
1.5 Organization of thesis
This chapter introduces participant reference and the significance of studying it for the Bunong language. Chapter 2 reviews the literature that pertains to participant
reference in narrative discourse and briefly mentions other research on Bunong and related Mon-Khmer languages. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the phonology and
grammar of Bunong. Chapter 4 explains the methodologies used in the analysis for this thesis and how they are applied. Chapter 5 describes the resources used for participant
reference in the texts studied. Chapter 6 describes various types of referring expressions used and factors that determine the best type in different contexts. Chapter 7 explains the
results of applying Dooley and Levinsohn’s 2001 Sequential Default method. Chapter 8 presents the Discourse profile of the third person narratives and a discussion of how
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Discourse Operations inform the referring expressions for all of the texts. And finally, Chapter 9 synthesizes the results after applying each method, discusses issues and
implications of each method, and provides direction for future study.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
