Self-Association in Murriny Patha Talk-in-Interaction

Abstract

When referring to persons in talk-in-interaction, interlocutors recruit the particular referential expressions that best satisfy both cultural and interactional contingencies, as well as the speaker's own personal objectives. Regular referring practices reveal cultural preferences for choosing particular classes of reference forms for engaging in particular types of activities.

When speakers of the northern Australian language Murriny Patha refer to each other, they display a clear preference for associating the referent to the current conversation's participants. This preference for Association is normally achieved through the use of triangular reference forms such as kinterms. Triangulations are reference forms that link the person being spoken about to another specified person (e.g. Bill's doctor). Triangulations are frequently used to associate the referent to the current speaker (e.g. my father), to an addressed recipient (your uncle) or co-present other (this bloke's cousin).

Murriny Patha speakers regularly associate key persons to themselves when making authoritative claims about items of business and important events. They frequently draw on kinship links when attempting to bolster their epistemic position. When speakers demonstrate their relatedness to the event's protagonists, they ground their contribution to the discussion as being informed by appropriate genealogical connections (effectively, ‘I happen to know something about that. He was after all my own uncle’).

Keywords:

• Person Reference
• Aboriginal Talk-in-Interaction
• Kinship
• Epistemic Authority

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers and to Rod Gardner whose helpful comments greatly improved this paper. Thanks also to my Murriny Patha speaking consultants, some of whom, unfortunately, are no longer with us. This research was funded by two ARC Discovery grants: DP0450131 2004-8 (Preserving Australia's Endangered Heritages: Murriny Patha song at Wadeye) and DP0878557 (Tracing Change in Family and Social Organization, using Evidence from Language).

Notes

¹Abbreviations used in this paper: Anaph=anaphoric demonstrative, br=brother, dauc=‘daucal’ (dual/paucal), Dist=distal, du=dual, Dub=dubitative, Emph=Emphatic, ex=exclusive of the addressee, Exist=existential, f=feminine, fa=father, Foc=focus, FPP=first pair part (of an adjacency pair), Intens=intensifier, IO=indirect object, Loc=locative, m=masculine, mo=mother, nFut=non-future, nsib=non-sibling, OIR=other initiation of repair, pauc=paucal, Part=particle, pl=plural, Pos=possessive, Prox=proximal, Pst=past, PstImp=past imperfective, Redup=reduplication, RR=reflexive/reciprocal, RS=repair solution, S=subject, s=singular, SPP=second pair part (of an adjacency pair), Top=Topicalizer, TS=trouble source, zi=sister. 1, 2 or 3=first, second or third person. Subsequent numbers between 8 and 38 indicate verb class. For example, 3sS.23.nFut would be a fusional morpheme glossed as ‘third singular subject, class 23, non-future’.

²Further on these two preferences (Minimization and Recipient Design/Recognition) see Hacohen and Schegloff (2006), Schegloff (1996, 2007a), Levinson (1987, 2007) and Blythe (2009).

³Although expansion of the corpus (with video recordings) is currently underway, the new material has not yet been parsed and translated to the standard required for inclusion in the present study.

⁴Due to semantic interdependence between the various bound pronoun series and the fusional number marking morphemes, bound pronouns cannot be considered to be argument affixes, which they can in certain other Australian polysynthetic languages (cf. Baker 2002; Evans 2002). As such, the entire verb complex should be thought of as a multifunctional word that is jointly used for both reference and predication at the same time. See Blythe (2009) for details.

⁵The tendency to use verbal cross-reference alone (or implied ‘zero’ references) for ‘locally subsequent’ references to persons makes this reference type the interactional counterpart to using pronouns for ‘locally subsequent’ reference in English conversations. As such, verbal cross-reference is the unmarked form for use in ‘locally subsequent reference positions’ (Schegloff 1996: 450; Blythe 2009). Placing these forms in non-subsequent reference positions allows speakers to do ‘“pointed” reference’ (Schegloff 1996: 455)—that is, to perform special activities by referring to them.

⁶Thus free pronouns are typically used for person references that are ‘locally initial’, though ‘globally subsequent’ (Blythe 2009).

⁷Triangulations should not be confused with tri-relational kinterms (McConvell 1982; McConvell & Obata 2006) which have not been attested in Murriny Patha discourse.

⁸Only the addressee-associated triangulations (e.g. your uncle, your mechanic) are necessarily recognitional in design. Such forms make explicit that the referent is known to the recipient, and that the speaker knows the referent to be known by the recipient.

⁹The man Mangalala mentioned in line 107 is not the same person as the three girls’ great-grandfather referred to in line 113. In this case, the noticeable similarity in the fate of the former man to that of the latter (both were either speared or shot in the vicinity) prompts Phyllis's enquiry as to exact location of the latter's demise.

¹⁰The man had been dead long enough that any taboos on the use of his name would have long passed. Indeed, his name has become the three girls’ surname.

¹¹In Murriny Patha, the reduplication of nominals marks either plurality or intensification. Reduplicated kinterms either denote more than one member of the specified kin-relation, or a single, biological (as opposed to classificatory) kinsman, as is the case here.

¹²Though addressee-association is certainly implicated in inviting the recipient to recognize the referent. See Blythe (2009) for details.

¹³That is, on account of possibly preferential association to the addressee, or of the closer genetic distance of the referent to one of the story recipients.

¹⁴ Tidha is a totemic moniker for people of the Murriny Patha patriclan Yek Nangu.

¹⁵As this example from Schegloff (2007b: 102) illustrates. Note also the recycling of ‘sound happy’.

¹⁶Cf. 26% for triangulations, 15% for minimal descriptions, 4% for nicknames, 7.5% for free pronouns, 13.2% for verbal cross-reference.

¹⁷Avoidance recognitionals may be thought of as a specialization of Stivers’ (2007) ‘alternative recognitionals’ which are recognitional reference forms that depart from the unmarked forms for recognitionals (names). In these cases, the departures are driven by the need to avoid a particular name. For both speaker and hearers alike, there is an assumption that the form is being utilized on account of a naming restriction.

¹⁸Subjects of Murriny Patha verbs are unmarked for gender. That the subject is understood to be male is a result of a contrast with the explicitly feminine reference to the wife, done with the 3sfIO -nge.

¹⁹As such, Elizabeth is not here associating the referent to any of the present interlocutors.

²⁰[Ø pipin=ngay]=niyurnu

[Ø fa.zi=1sPos]=3sfPos

‘my aunt's [son/daughter]’

²¹The production of this extra reference form effectively amounts to a relaxation of the preference for Minimization. The question is, however, ‘In favour of what has Minimization been relaxed?’.

²²Strictly speaking, it isn't completely redundant information. In addition to fa.zi, pipi can also denote the avoidable nginarr variety of ‘aunts’ (sp.mo, mo.mo.br.da), whose children are second cousins (nanggun, mo.mo.br.da.so and purrima, mo.mo.br.da.so). However, marriageability of these kin would not have triggered the name avoidance required for a close opposite-sex cousin (pugarli).