postpositional object will generally be treated as a transitive construction in the present paper. ‘Object’ will denote either a direct object or a postpositional object unless it is stated otherwise.
When the subject is third person, one-NP transitive clauses are generally oNP yi-Ø-V or sNP bi-Ø-V. In both two-NP and one-NP clauses, in direct clauses, the object NP, the second, or the only, NP, is
coindexed with the object pronominal yi-, and in inverse clauses, the subject NP, the second, or the only, NP, is coindexed with the subject pronominal Ø-.
In addition to sNP oNP yi-Ø-V and oNP sNP bi-Ø-V clauses, cases of both oNP sNP yi-Ø-V and sNP oNP bi-Ø-V occur in Chiricahua Apache narrative and will be discussed below sections 2.1.4.1 and
2.1.4.2, respectively.
2.1.2 Third person tracking by the yi-bi- alternation
When the yi-bi- alternation is used in participant tracking in Athabaskan, one of the participants when in object function is coded by bi- and the other by yi- or their cognates. This “allows for a much more
extensive use of anaphora in Athabaskan than would be possible without the alternation. Literal translations are often hard to follow because of this extensive use of anaphora” Thompson 1979:21
and paucity of NP. Thompson exemplifies an extract from a Dena’ina story collected by Tenenbaum in which a wolf is following a man and finally kills him. There are twenty-three clauses and eleven changes
of subject but only four nouns: tiqin ‘wolf’ in four changes of subject when the wolf becomes the subject, and there is no NP-coding of the man at any point. Obviative ye- codes the wolf as object when the man
is subject and proximate ve- codes the man when the wolf is subject ye- and ve- are cognates of yi- and bi- respectively.
9
The yi-bi- alternation may be used in the same way in Apachean and its use is the default third person participant reference strategy. Sandoval says, “In my work with text analysis [in Jicarilla
Apache], I have seen that sentences without nominals are the most frequent; and in discourse, nominals are added only when it is necessary to make clear what the referents of the pronominal verbal arguments
are [similarly, Uyechi 1990:45; Müller 2002:5814]. The following is from a recording I made of a narrative told by my mother, Margarita Sandoval” Sandoval 1984:163:
2 gaat’í ̨
-go nahá
anlé ná ̨ąłni
daayiiłni ná
it.is.light -when for.us you.make possibly they.said.to.him
NARR
doo_____da daabiiłni
ná dooda
daabiiłni -nda
no-o-o-o-o he.told.them
NARR
no he.told.them -even.though
daay ókąąh
-go y
anaada’iłt’éí -go
dí ̨í ̨’įįshdi silí ̨ -go
they.were.begging.him -when they.repeatedly.supplicated.him -when four.times it.became -when aoo
biiłni ná
yes he.said.to.them
NARR
Note the yi-bi- alternation in the alternate lines, depending on to which participant the pronominal refers, and the absence of any NP that refer to the two participants, “he” and “they”.
The following is a Chiricahua Apache example from Kenoi’s “The Foolish People and the White Men”. In this and similar displays to follow, only the essentials of a clause outside quotes are included
and the contents of any quotes are only summarised. The numbers in the narrow columns represent my own numbering of the clauses in the narrative; they are sometimes discontinuous because for brevity’s
sake not all the clauses are necessarily included. If a pronominal codes a ‘prop’, it is italicised and so is any NP coindexed with it; its English gloss is italicised also.
postpositional object with an unmarked third person subject Ø- can only be y- Lovick 2005, section 3.1.2. Jung 1999:130 has other examples.
9
ye- also codes the wolf as subject. For yə- as a subject prefix in some of the Alaskan Athabaskan languages, see
Thompson 1989b:217f, and 239, footnote 5.
3 001
a
sNP bi-Ø-V
White men came to them the Foolish People in a group. 002
bi-V passive They were shot at. 003
ʔił-Ø-V They the Foolish People speak to one another ʔił- ‘RECIP’.
004 “Don’t annoy them,”
005 ʔił-Ø-V
they say to one another ʔił-. 006 sNP
bi-Ø-V The white men came among them.
007 bi-Ø-V
They sabre them. 008
b
oNP yi-Ø-V They get between the white men.
009 “WhyWhat has someone done to you that
010 you sabre him”
011 yi-Ø-V
they say to them to white men. 012
c
bi-V passive They the Foolish People began to be killed.
a
The verb of clause 001 is baajíńzhoozh ‘they came to them in a group’, third person subject. ji- in this verb form is not the fourth person subject prefix but is a derivational prefix ji- j- collocating with this
stem -zhóósh, -zhoozh ‘several move as a group’.
b
The verb nádaayótą of 008, ‘they went between them’, can mean to get between fighters Hoijer 1938:131.
c
In 012, yi- is not an option in the unipersonal passive verb. Similarly in line 002.
In clauses 001–011, proximate bi- refers to the Foolish People and any obviative yi- to the white men, and any NP refer to the white men, not to the main characters—the Foolish People. Stated in other
terms, the point of view remains with the Foolish People as the more topical participants in this passage for ‘point of view’, see Chafe 1994:132; also called ‘empathy’ [Kuno 1987:206]; Fillmore [1997] uses
the term ‘deictic center’. The context of passage 4 from Kenoi’s “Coyote and the Rolling Rock” is that Coyote has been
warned by someone unnamed that a big rock lying by the road is one that moves about and he should not defecate on it. Nevertheless, he does so, and the rock rolls out in pursuit of him:
4 015 sNP bi-Ø-V
The rock rolled out after him. 016
yi-Ø-V He ran from it.
017 bi-kétsíń-ee Ø-V
It is rolling along right at his bi- heels. 018
oNP yi-Ø-V He ran with all his bi- strength.
019 sNP bi-kétsíń-ee Ø-V
The rock is rolling along right at his bi- heels. 020 sNP
Ø-V Coyote speaks:
021 “Did you ever see me running at my very best speed?”
022 oNP
yi-Ø-V he says to the rock.
023 oNP yi-Ø-V
He ran with his bi- very best speed. 024
bi-kétsíń-ee Ø-V It is rolling along right at his bi- heels.
025 yi-Ø-V
He ran from it into a hole. The yi-bi- alternation may extend to postpositional phrases when the postposition occurs with an
inalienably-possessed body part Willie 1991:195f such as -kétsíń-ee ‘ankle-at’, so that the bi-structures in 4, bi-Ø-V and bi-kétsíń-ee Ø-V, are syntactically equivalent. bi- refers to Coyote, the main character,
and yi- to the rock, and the point of view remains with Coyote, whether Coyote is subject or not. Note that, apart from an sNP occurring in a pre-quotative in 4 in 020, in both 3 and 4 any NP
code non-topical participants, the participants whose point of view is not taken in these two passages— the white men in 3 and the rock in 4.
Quotative verb forms
10
are defined here by both structure and function. In function, they introduce or close quotes; in structure they have the form transitive
ʔá-O-ł-S-ⁿdí ‘say so to’ or intransitive ʔá-S- ⁿdí ‘say so’. ʔá- occurs in pre-quotatives and not in post-quotatives; a pre-quotative clause alone is a
grammatical sentence but a post-quotative clause without a quote is not. Not all quotes have a pre- quotative and post-quotative, and a quote may occur without one or both.
11
Note that by definition O- ch’įį-yá-S-ł-ti ‘speak to’, for example, is not a quotative.
When passages such as the above are studied in which there are two major participants onstage, third-person-coded, and the point of view remains with one of them, the more topical participant, the
canonical forms are found to be as follows, in which the A. forms occur when the topical participant is subject and the B. forms when the topical participant is object:
5 A.
or sNP
sNP oNP
yi-Ø-V Ø-V
verb transitive or intransitive; topical participant is subject, and if the verb is transitive the other
participant is coded by obviative yi-; sNP is generally absent with change of subject
B. sNP
bi-Ø-V topical participant is object, coded by proximate
object bi-; sNP is generally present with change of subject
In fact, any NP, subject or object, tends to code the less-topical participant. ‘Props’ are coded by yi- when the subject is third person, illustrated by the props ‘all his strength’ in
018 and ‘his very best speed’ in 023 of 4 above. Attention will be drawn to other examples as they arise.
Canonical forms are those ‘bare bones’ of clause structures which occur with a certain frequency; that is, excluding those that are judged to be rare or quite infrequent. By the ‘bare bones’ of a clause is
meant the verb including in it only those pronominals which code the two interacting participants, together with any NP coindexed with the pronominals.
The point of view does not always remain with one participant and the forms which occur in that case are discussed in section 4.
Also, chart 5 above does not cover the case of clauses containing verb forms go-Ø-V in which go- is the fourth person object pronominal which, in the absence of participant tracking by means of the
fourth person section 3, occur in certain post-quotative and non-quotative clauses to be discussed in sections 4 and 5 for when the point of view does not remain, and for when it does remain, with one
participant.
2.1.3 Further properties of third person bi- and yi-
