Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

244 WILLIAM H. JACOBSEN, JR.

6.2 Indicative

We can get a needed contrasting case to show that absolutives can also take

on indicative, rather than quotati ve, force by considering some texts of per­

sonal reminiscence outside of our main sample. Five short ones are nos. 34-

38 (pp. 130-139), dictated by a different informant, Tom (Sayachapis).

Being told in the first person, these show 14 occurrences of first person sin­

gular indicative forms in -(m)ah and 76 of corresponding absolutives in -sr,

plus 4 of first person plural absolutives in -nr. Of the indicatives, 6 are in

direct quotations, as are the handful of second and third person indicative

forms that also occur. The 8 -(m)ah indicatives in narrative stretches are

found in three of the texts (nos. 34, 35, 37). Their distribution is hardly ran­

dom. Three of them are the first word of the text. Three more begin the

non-initial paragraphs into which the editors have divided texts nos. 34 and

35. The other two are the first inflected words of the last sentences of the
    second and third paragraphs of no. 34, so that these paragraphs are framed
    by these indicative forms. The other two of these texts (nos. 36 and 38)
    have no indicative forms in narrative. (There may be some implicit carry­
    over from one text to another, as these were all dictated within three days,
    and we are told that no. 37 followed immediately after no. 36.) Thus we see
    a similar distribution of these first person absolutives which convey the
    illocutionary force of reportage of directly experienced events. Indicative
    forms, like quotative ones, need not occur at all, but when they do, they
    precede stretches of absolutives. There are about ten times as many first
    person absolutives as indicatives, in addition to third person absolutives, in
    these narrative passages. In this example (from no. 35) the first verb is in
    the first person singular indicative, and the next following first person sin­
    gular form is absolutive:
    (132:14-15)
    collect-PAST-iNDic-lsG mussel ... paddle-lsG night
    "I was collecting mussels ... I was paddling at night".

6.3 Tense

Not only this contrast of evidentiality, but also categories of the clausal

operator of tense can apparently be imposed on the absolutive in clausal

cosubordination. This is less obvious in the mythological tales because of a