Available From UC Press

The Twins Stories

Participant Coding in Yagua Narrative
Thomas E. Payne
This work is a quantitative discourse study of referential devices in Yagua, a relatively unstudied language of the Amazon basin. Of particular interest are folktales in which the major participants are matched pairs, and which involve extensive use of direct speech. A major finding is that the indices of ""Referential Distance"" and ""Persistence"" quantify distinct functional domains.