Online and offline bridging constructions in Korowai

Korowai has two main types of bridging constructions, recapitulative linkage (also known as ``tail-head linkage'') and summary linkage with generic verbs of doing, each with two subtypes that follow from the grammatical distinction between chained and adverbial or thematic types of clause combining. Recapitulative linkage with chained, switch reference marked clauses is by the far the most frequent type of bridging construction. It has three functions. First, a processual function, to give the speaker and addressee a processing pause in between two often lengthy clause chains. Second, it creates chains of clause chains, so called chaining paragraphs. The third function is to enable the speaker to continue referential tracking in the transition from one clause chain to the next. Recapitulative linkage with thematic subordinate clauses shares the processual function wih the chained type but it signals discourse discontinuity: it disrupts the event and participant lines and the speaker goes off the event line. Summary linkage allows speakers to be less specific in the scope of their anaphoric linkage, not necessarily taking the final clause of the previous sentence as their reference clause

Demonstratives, referent identification and topicality in Wambon and some other Papuan languages

Abstract In Papuan languages like Wambon and Urim demonstrative forms are used both in contexts of referent identification, e.g. as demonstrative operators in noun phrases, and in topicality contexts, e.g. as topic markers with adverbial clauses and phrases, recapitulative clauses, new topic NPs and given topic NPs. Using notions from the Functional Grammar framework (Dik, 1989), I present a non-unified account of the demonstrative forms: helping the addressee to identify referents by giving deictic hints like ‘close to speaker’ and orienting the addressee about the topical cohesion of the discourse are two separate functional domains in language. This ‘two-domain’ hypothesis, which views the demonstrative forms as having two synchronically unrelated functions, explains the fact that in Wambon and Urim the demonstratives show important differences in form and behaviour depending on whether they are used for referent identification or for expressing topicality distinctions. The ‘two-domain’ hypothesis explains such formal differences but cannot explain the formal similarities between topic markers and demonstrative operators in Papuan languages like Wambon and Urim. To explain these formal similarities I suggest a diachronic development: in several Papuan languages topic markers developed from demonstrative operators. In the relatively well-documented Awyu-family of Papuan languages this process can be traced: in Wambon, the resumptive demonstrative pronoun- eve integrated in the preceding NP as a topic marker in stative clauses with a very transparant dichotomous topic-comment structure. In Korowai, also of the Awyu-family, the clitic -efè, function as a demonstrative operator and functions solely as a topic marker