While fourth person reference-switching occurs most frequently in same-non-agent units which contain quotes, it has been seen that there can also be same-non-agent units in which there is fourth person reference-switching but in which there is no quote and all the clauses are non-
quotative. The examples were contained in passages 51, 53, and 54. The choice between the two alternatives for post-quotatives will be discussed below in section 4.4.
In comparison with continuous fourth person tracking see section 3, NP are more frequent when fourth person reference-switching is present.
4.3 Contiguous fourth person tracking and reference-switching
There may be some analytical ambiguity when narrative blocks are contiguous, one of which belongs to a system of fourth person reference- switching and the other to a system of continuous fourth person tracking. It can arise that clauses at the boundary ambiguously belong to either
of the two blocks. There are of course many clauses which do not belong to either system—in the simplest case in a sequence of intransitive third person clauses. Some of the observations made in this section will have relevance in section 7.2.4.
Clauses 080–082 immediately follow the fourth person reference-switching unit of clauses 070–079 and precede that of clauses 083–090, and these two latter clause spans have both been presented in section 4.1, passages 52 and 53. The last same-non-agent unit of the first and
the first same-non-agent unit of the second are included here with clauses 080–082: 56 076 sNP
oNP yi-Ø-V
Giant speaks to Child of the Water: 077
“Well then, hand them over,” 079
go-Ø-V he says to him.
080 bi-bi-ji- V
He Child of the Water gave them to him G.
081 sNP oNP
go- yi-Ø-V Giant rubbed the arrows for him.
082 go- yi-Ø-V He threw them away for him.
083 sNP oNP
yi-Ø-V Child of the Water speaks to Giant:
084 “You Where are your arrows?”
085 go-Ø-V
he says to him. In clause 079 the fourth person object pronominal refers to Child of the Water, the participant to be fourth-person-tracked in clauses 080–082.
Therefore, an extension backwards of fourth person tracking to include the sentence consisting of clauses 077–079—the post-quotative 079 and its quote, clauses 077–078—might be considered. However, this would break up the canonical fourth person reference-switching unit of clauses
076–079. Note that there is not fourth person tracking in the whole two-sentence unit 076–079 because Child of the Water is not fourth-person- coded in 076.
The passage in 51, clauses 060–064 section 4.1, was analysed there as a reference-switching unit, fourth person coding Giant in clause 062 and coding Child of the Water in 063. But Child of the Water, fourth-person-coded in 063 and not mentioned in clause 064, is fourth-
person-tracked in the clauses 065–069. Therefore extending the fourth person tracking backwards to include clause 063 and 064 in a fourth person tracking unit 063–069 can be considered:
57 060 sNP oNP yi-Ø-V
Child of the Water speaks to Giant: 061
“I have prepared what you will make your excrement,” 062
go-Ø-V he says to him.
063 sNP oNP
go- yi-Ø-V Giant took the meat away from him CoW.
064 bi-
tł’áh-yá yi-Ø-V
He put it down at a place under him bi- G. 065
bi-bi- ji- V
He CoW took it away from him G.
066 go- yi-Ø-V
He G took it away from him CoW.
067 bi-bi-
ji- V He CoW took it away from him G.
068 go- yi-Ø-V
He G took it away from him CoW.
069
ʔił-bi- ji- V Theyhe CoW passed it from one to the
other ʔił- ‘RECIP’ four times.
Note that it is undoubtedly the case that there are non-quotative same-non-agent units exhibiting fourth person reference-switching which cannot be reassigned to fourth person tracking units; for example, non-quotative clauses 114–116 and 117–125 in passage 54 are both same-
non-agent units exhibiting fourth person reference-switching which cannot be reanalysed as fourth person tracking in the context of clauses 095– 125—only in a trivial sense within each same-non-agent unit individually.
In passages 56 and 57, the fourth person tracking units clauses 080–082 and 063–069 respectively are non-overlapping with those units in which dialogue occurs. But in the following passage 58 clauses 049–055 are repeated from passage 50, the quote of clause 058 is
contained in the fourth person tracking unit of clauses 056–059:
58 049 sNP oNP yi-Ø-V
Child of the Water speaks to Killer of Enemies: 050
“Don’t cry,” 052
yi-Ø-V he says to him.
053 sNP oNP yi-Ø-V
Killer of Enemies speaks to Child of the Water: 054
“I cry because Giant is coming,” 055
go-Ø-V he says to him.
056
a
oNP bi- ji- V
-go He CoW beginning to eat the meat-
SUB
057 go- yi-Ø-V
he Giant took it from him.
058 “You sg have that which I will eat,”
059 sNP postposed go- Ø-V
he says to him, Giant does.
060 sNP oNP yi-Ø-V
Child of the Water speaks to Giant: 061
I have prepared that which you will make your excrement, 062
go-Ø-V he says to him.
a
Hoijer has ‘they’ and ‘them’ for ‘he’ and ‘him’ CoW in clauses 056–059 but note the second singular subject prefix in the quote. Third and fourth person dual verb forms are the same as the corresponding singular forms unless the
rare dual prefix is used see Hoijer 1945:203.
The quote of 058 has no pre-quotative when there is fourth person tracking, about 70 of quotes are without a pre-quotative in Mithlo’s ten narratives. Since the quote occurs within the fourth person tracking unit clauses 056–059, it could be expected that if there were a pre-quotative
it would be of the form sNP go-Ø-V the addressee, Child of the Water, is the fourth-person-tracked participant. If the pre-quotative were sNP oNP yi-Ø-V—presumably an acceptable alternative—this would create a reference-switching unit comprising the pre-quotative and clauses 058–
062; there would still be a fourth person tracking unit clauses 056–057. In passing, note that props the arrows in 56 and the meat in 57 and 58 are third-person-coded, by yi- when the subject is third person
Giant in these passages and by bi- when the subject is fourth Child of the Water in these passages yi- never occurring with a fourth person subject ji-, section 2.1. The alternation between yi- and bi-, dependent upon the person of the subject, is particularly noticeable in 57 clauses
065-068.
4.4 Pragmatics of the post-quotative pronominal choices
