Salience Definition of terms

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3.1.1.1 Salience

The term “salient” is used to describe that which is the ‘most noticeable or important” McKean 2006:789. In this thesis, when I speak of devices marking a referent as salient, I am referring to ones which indicate that the referent is more noticeable than others in the local context because of the part that it plays in the discourse which follows. These devices tell a listener to pay attention to a particular referent because it is important. 3.1.1.2 Definiteness and indefiniteness I define definiteness and indefiniteness with regard to the Givenness Hierarchy proposed by Gundel et al. Gundel proposes that there are six cognitive statuses relevant to the form of referring expressions in language 1993:275. They are presented in the following order: in focus, activated, familiar, uniquely identifiable, referential, and type identifiable loc. cit.. She claims that “in using a particular form, a speaker thus signals that she assumes the associated cognitive status is met and, since each status entails all lower statuses, she also signals that all lower statuses statuses to the right have been met” loc. cit.. I follow her in defining the last three terms as follows: The status “type identifiable” indicates that the hearer can identify the type of referent to which the speaker refers. Thus, by using “dog,” the speaker assumes that the hearer knows what a dog is. This is a minimal requirement for a noun. 50 The status “referential” indicates that the speaker “intends to refer to a particular object or objects” ibid. 276. In this text corpus, NPs marked as indefinite are normally referential. 26 The formation of indefinite NPs will be described in 4.1 and 4.2. The status “uniquely identifiable” indicates that the “addressee can identify the speaker’s intended referent on the basis of the nominal alone” ibid. 277. This is the requirement for use of a definite NP or NP marked by a demonstrative in Hani. 27 The formation of these NPs will be described in 4.1 and 4.3. It is important to note that the parameters given above are only the minimal requirements for a NP to receive coding of a certain type. As will be shown below, Hani nouns are often unmarked for definiteness, with a variety of pragmatic effects. Thus, my statement that definite NPs must be uniquely identifiable is not a claim that uniquely identifiable referents must be marked for definiteness.

3.1.2 Pronominal forms