242 WILLIAM H. JACOBSEN, JR.
6. Clause chaining
The successive occurrences of quotative predicates are typically followed by
one or more main clauses in absolutive form. For example:
jump up-MOM-QuoT-3 Raven-son spear land on beach beneath-
FIN-3
"Raven jumped up, and the spear landed on the beach beneath
him.
get ready on beach-MOM-FiN-QuoT-3-again spear-MOM-FiN-3
Raven again got ready and he speared;
(27:7-8)
Raven-son do again-FiN-3.
he [Skate] did it again".
Since the absolutives are not embedded in other clauses, but take their
illocutionary force from the preceding quotatives, I take this to be an exam
ple of loose clause chaining or clausal cosubordination. Although these
clauses lack their peripheries, there seem to be no more restrictions on the
arguments they may take than for finite clauses. Thus, in the preceding pas
sage, the second occurrence of "Raven" is the subject of absolutive
"speared". It will also be seen that there is no grammatical indication of the
changes of subjects within the third person.
6.1 Quotative
Given this predominant sequential ordering of quotative before absolutive,
it seems that the illocutionary force of narrated tale is projected forward
from the quotative to the absolutive. However, this is somewhat of an
idealization, as in some cases the absolutives are not preceded by quotative
predicates, so it seeems that this interpretation is also imposed by the prag
matic fact of the storytelling event, of which there are additional cues in the
text. In our sample, six of the seven tales begin with a quotative form.
There are 67 additional stretches that begin after a quotation or a song. Of
these, 43 have their first predicate marked as quotative (in one case [23:7]
this is on the second word of the stretch). Thus about two-thirds of these
beginnings are so marked.
