This study has two goals. The first is to provide an account of the different referential forms in Olo, a minority language in Papua New Guinea, and to show why different referential forms are chosen. To
adequately explain the different referential forms, they must be set within the context of a grammati- cal description. Therefore a basic grammar of Olo is included in this work. Making information about
Olo more widely known is the second goal of this study. The main thrust of the basic grammar revolves around the morphosyntactic devices used to realize participants in Olo. While the description of Olo is
focused primarily on morphosyntactic issues of interest in discourse analysis, it is broad enough that someone interested in languages of Papua New Guinea should find some useful material. The gram-
matical analysis is based on language data collected during a period of ten years 1981–1991 while I worked in Papua New Guinea under the auspices of SIL International. The discourse analysis is text
based. The texts were either recordings of stories told primarily to Olo speakers or written for Olo speakers. The texts are given in appendix A.
Chapter 1 gives a general background on the Olo-speaking people and a general outline of the theory of reference being pursued in this work. Chapter 2 gives a basic introduction to the Olo language.
Chapter 3 defines reference and lays the groundwork for examining reference from a cognitive per- spective, while chapter 4 discusses the methods employed in the analysis of the data. Chapter 5 dis-
cusses the results and summarizes the conclusions of the study.
1.2 The Olo Speakers and Language Affiliation
Olo is a non-Austronesian
2
language of Papua New Guinea and is spoken by approximately 13,000 speakers. The Olo were little known before the end of World War II. Since then some work has been done
in both ethnography D.E. McGregor 1969, 1982; Mitchell 1973, 1979, 1987, 1990 and linguistics A. McGregor 1983; D. E. McGregor, 1983b, 1983c, 1983d; Staley 1989, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1994d. This
current study will help make known the people and fill in some of the gaps regarding the Olo language.
The Olo speakers live in a pear-shaped area extending up to Aitape Township in the north and some thirty miles south in the Sandaun West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea see the map in figure 1.1.
The speakers are spread out among fifty-four villages and the Poro Resettlement Scheme. There are also numerous speakers spread throughout other cities and rural areas of Papua New Guinea. The majority of
the population live south of the Torrecelli Mountains, with roughly 1,200 residing in coastal villages. The southern groups live on high ridges while the coastal people live on the plain. The coastal area is serviced
out of Aitape while south of the mountains, Lumi is the main government center.
Mitchell summarizes the social life of the people: The Wape
3
live in a mountainous tropical forest habitat, are slash and burn horticulturalists [sic] and reside in sedentary villages. Post marital residence is generally virilocal, patrilineal clans are ideally exogamous
while patrilineages are strictly so. Marriage is by bridewealth and polygyny is permitted but rare. Cousin kin terms are Omaha. The society is egalitarian in terms of male status and, although the society is hierar-
chical in terms of sex and age differences, both women and the young enjoy higher status than in many New Guinea societies. While most Wape are nominal Christians, traditional religious beliefs and practices
are of major importance. Most men also are members of curing societies that involve the population in an extensive system of culturally significant ritual exchanges. Mitchell 1987:18
Olo is a member of the Wape 3 family of the Torrecelli Phylum. The Torrecelli Phylum is a phylum level isolate Laycock 1975. The Olo language is divided into three dialects Staley 1989: Lumi, Somoro, and
Coastal. A map with the dialect boundaries is given in figure 1.1. The boundaries of the dialects have been determined based on grammatical considerations, amount of shared words, and sociolinguistic consider-
ations. These boundaries should not be considered absolute. Rather, they delineate where major changes take place. Both within the dialects and across dialects, however, there is dialect chaining.
2 Introduction
2
The term Papuan is often applied to these languages. Using the term Papuan implies more affiliation than there actually is. Olo is a member of the Torrecelli Phylum which is genetically distinct from the other language phyla of Papua New Guinea. It
bears little structural relationship with the “classic” New Guinea highlands language which has distinctives such as medialfinal verbs and switch-reference marking.
3
The term Wape is one that is often used for the people, particularly those south of the Torrecelli Mountains.
Figure 1.1. Map of the Olo language area.
1.2 The Olo Speakers and Language Affiliation 3
The data in this study are from the Somoro dialect. While many of the conclusions should hold for the other dialects, there is not a one-to-one correspondence.
1.3 The Current Working Theory of Reference
