Punctuation Discourse markers Dividing the Text

There are a few verbs that commonly occur in travel situations besides the words for go and come. They are given in table 4.3. Table 4.3. Olo secondary spatial verbs ulsi ‘follow someone’ ingi ‘follow a trail, river, or natural feature’ itipi ‘go down’ unwei ‘go up’ The likelihood of a change being related to an episode boundary is the amount of disjunction be- tween locations. What is common in Olo narratives is the gradual shift from one location to another. This shift in location can be viewed as a boundary phenomenon. In this analysis, the degree of spatial change is assigned according to a specific formula. The higher the number, the more likely a change of location has occurred. When a precise location is specified as a location for a significant temporal du- ration, one of the existential verbs like ratei ‘be, live’ or ato ‘stay temporarily’ are used. This is consis- tent with the setting of a time for a discourse. Clauses with such verbs are given a value of 4 for spatial location. The next most likely setting of a new location involves arrival at a new place. Clauses that in- volve arrival at a specific place will have one of two verbs, either fale ‘arrive’ or naro ‘come out’. This clause will be assigned a 3 for spatial location. Motion verbs encode the intermediary step from one place to another; they are part of the boundary between two settings. The use of a pure motion verb e ‘go’ or au ‘come’ or a motion verb involving direction, like itipi ‘go down’ or unwei ‘go up’, are assigned a value of 2. The start of a border involves the leaving of a place. Once a participant has left a place he is no longer in the same spatial location, but his location has not been specified yet, so inception of travel, if marked, will be given a value of 1. Inception is marked by verbs such usa ‘leave’. In this way I have attempted to quantify the degree of change from one location to another and look at how firm the boundaries are between the two settings.

4.3.3 Punctuation

Another gauge of event coherence is punctuation. In written text, punctuation serves much the same purpose as pauses. It is used to organize the text into various levels and subgroups. In this study, the text is also marked according to the different punctuation provided by the authors in the case of the written work, and by a native Olo speaker working on a transcription of the oral story. Events are grouped together by the punctuation bracketing the clauses. The clause following a punctuation mark is given a numerical value according to the punctuation used. Clauses following “sentence” punctua- tion “.?” are given a value of 4. Any clause after a colon “:” is assigned a value of 3. A clause after a semicolon “;” is assigned a value of 2. A clause following a comma “,” is assigned a value of 1. This pro- vides a second means of determining how events are grouped together.

4.3.4 Discourse markers

Olo has a variety of lexical morphemes that link one clause chain to another. These discourse mark- ers, discussed in chapter 2, are examined to see if they interact with the choice of reference. They are used to show how tightly the units are linked or coupled within the discourse. Table 4.4 gives a list of the different links. They are broken into two different categories: sequencers and results. The sequen- cers are used to move the discourse forward along the event line. They may also mark out some type of episodesubepisode boundary. Gernsbacher 1990 proposes that starting an English sentence with certain adverbials like next or then causes a shift in episode structure. If referential form is tied to boundaries, then we can expect to see an influence of the boundary on the referential form. In this study the different discourse markers are not considered independently but are treated as a single class. We will look to see if the group as a class has any effect on referential management. 66 Methods Table 4.4. Olo discourse linkers sequencers le sequence so close link sequence lo loose sequence wo ordered sequence leye lo major sequence eventresult yo non causal result leso casual effect eite reason result eis “so that”

4.3.5 Event coherence