163 +
+ V0
do growth do big
along with approach now ‘Hey kids, children Let’s go study, go recite until you are big and grown up all
the way until nowadays.’ [Life 19]
8.3.8 Initiating utterance U
When a participant initiates an utterance, the referring expression for the speaker in the quote formula is coded more heavily. The Cow and the Fish stories contain 24
instances of initiating utterances. For this discourse operation, the referring expression for the speaker is never a zero. The initiating utterance marks a break from the narrated text
to a speech act or continued narration after a response to a question or comment. When the subject is already topical the S1 environment, the referring expression is
‘3S’ in 9 out of 14 instances 64. In the remaining five instances in the S1 environment, the
referring expressions are noun phrases. In the next example, the first clause 201a is narrated text and the second clause 201b introduces the initiating utterance. The
referring expression for the speaker in 201b is ‘3S’ and occurs in the S1
environment. 201 a. L
K +
NEG 3S want eat.rice want eat NEG2
‘No way did she Jii-Mlii want to eat rice or eat fish.’ b. +
+ K
after that 3S say ‘After that she Jii-Mlii said to her older sister, “quote.” ’ [Fish 310-1]
The next example illustrates a reply to a comment 202a and then the conversation is continued with an initiating question in clause 202b. The speaker in the
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initiating utterance in 202b is referenced with a pronoun + relative clause in the S2 environment.
202 a. +
K K uncle 3S.APP reply
not have ‘Uncle, he the bull owner, replied to the cow owner, “I do not have...” ’
b. K
3S REL graze cow female ask
what child cow ‘The one who grazed the cow asked the bull owner, “Which calf?” ’
[Cow 20, 24, 25] In four of the six instances where the initiating utterance is in the S3 or S4
environment, the referring expression for the speaker is an explicit noun phrase. A noun phrase is the default for both of these environments cf. §7.1.3 and §7.1.4. The other two
instances of an initiating utterance in the S4 environment are pronouns; one of the pronouns is easily identifiable from the context and the other pronoun is identifiable
because there is a global VIP in the story cf. §7.2.2. Example 203 illustrates a speaker in the S4 environment who initiates a speech act and is referenced with a pronoun +
emphatic marker. In this example, the referent is Jii-Mlii since she is the global VIP and the owner of the fish.
203 +
3S EMPH say ‘She, the owner Jii-Mlii said, “quote.” ’
[Fish 481]
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Chapter 9 Conclusion
9.0 Introduction
This study applied two different models of participant reference to determine the types of referring expressions used in a particular syntactic environment and if a referring
expression is predictable from the environment. Dooley and Levinsohn’s Sequential Default model and Longacre’s Discourse Profile and Discourse Operations model were
applied to two third person narratives, and where applicable, to a first person narrative. The first person narrative provided another resource for contrast and comparison.
This chapter provides summary conclusions about the findings from each method and the implications of this study for further research.
9.1 Synthesis
First of all, it was important to recognize that a narrator chooses different types of referring expressions for the participants depending upon the kind of participants human
or just animate and if there are any relationships consanguineal, status, or other shared among the participants. If kinship or relational terminology was used by the narrator
outside of quoted text, it had multiple layers of complexity. This terminology communicated consanguineal relationships in certain contexts, status in other contexts,
and functioned like a title for well-known personages. In the three narratives analyzed,
