First person orientation in Yidiñ narratives and its implications

Whereas traditional legends in the Australian language Dyirbal would be told in 3rd person, in its motherly neighbour, Yidiñ, 1st person was often preferred. That is, the narrator would take on the identity of the central character. In one legend the initial main character (telling the tale in 1st person) departs from the story (he dies),, then another character takes over, and continues the story from their perspective, in 1st person. As a consequence of this narrative style, 1st (and 2nd) person pronouns are extraordinarily frequent in Yidiñ narratives, occurring two to four times more often than pronouns in Dyirbal narratives. (The narrator takes on 1st person and uses 2nd person for anyone addressed.) This helps explain a syntactic difference between the two languages. Both have split morphology—ergative case marking for nominals and accusative marking for 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Coordination in Dyirbal is on an S/O (ergative) basis whether based on nominals or pronouns. In contrast, coordination in Yidiñ is on an S/O basis for nominals but on an S/A (accusative) basis for pronouns—reflecting the case marking on pronouns—due to the greeter frequency of pronouns in this language.