Who is it?

1. Write in the table below the referential expressions used by each speaker to refer for the first time to each woman and the child, then to the women again, and the child again.

	Native Speaker 1	Native Speaker 2	Pari	Fereshteh
1st mention of the old woman	yek zæn-e pir (an old woman)	yek khanum-e mosen (an elderly lady)	ye zæn-e kæmi pir (a sort of old woman)	maman bozorg (grand mother)
2nd mention of the old woman	khanum-e pir / in khanum (∅ old lady/ this lady)	khanum-e (the lady (informal))	pir zæn (Æ old woman)	maman bozorg (grand mother)
1st mention of the young woman	yek khænum-e jævan (a young lady)	yek khanum-e hæmsay-æshun (a lady who is their neighbor)	yek zæn-e dige ( one other (another) woman)	dokhtær (daughter)
2nd mention of the young women	-----------------	-----------------	in zæn-e dige/ va madær-e in dokhtær (this other woman/ and  this child’s mother)	dokhtær (daughter)
1st mention of child	ba dokhtær-e bæcheh-æsh (with her little girl)	yek dokhtær bæcheh-ye kuchulu (a little girl )	yek dokhtær-e khuchulu (a little girl)	nini (baby)
2nd mention of child	in dokhtær bæcheh-ye sheytun (this little naughty girl)	in dokhtær bæche (this little girl)	dokhtær-e khuchulu (the little girl (informal))	nini (baby)

In order to indicate to the listener whether what is being referred to is old information or new information, where English might use the definite article ‘the’, Persian might use “Æ”, an informal bound morpheme “-e” after the noun, or demonstratives “in/un”. Also, where English uses the indefinite articles ‘a’ or ‘an’, Persian uses the numeral “ye(k)”. For giving new information, both native speakers and Pari used the numeral “yek” plus noun (one + noun) to refer to both adults and the little girl, but Fereshteh did not use the numeral “ye(k) before the nouns to refer to any of the characters. For old information, Persian commonly uses nouns with demonstratives, as shown in both native speakers’ utterances when they mention the child for the second time. Native Speaker 1 used the demonstrative “in” to mention the old woman and Pari used the same demonstrative to refer to the young woman for the second time. Also, Native Speaker 2 and Pari used an informal bound morpheme “-e” in second mentions (N1: khanum-e, 2nd mention of the old woman / Pari: dokhtær-e 2nd mention of child); but Fereshteh did not.

2. What are some linguistic expressions that the learners use to maintain clear reference to the female characters in their narratives? How effective are they in helping you keep track of whom the narrator is referring to?

Both Pari and Fereshteh used nouns to refer to the three generations of women in the pictures, in both first and second mentions. But their word choices are different from each other. Interestingly, Fereshteh gave names to the characters: grandma, girl, and baby; this made it easy to exactly refer to each one of them. Pari used nouns with adjectives: a sort of old woman, the other woman/the child’s mother, and the little girl. As can be seen in the table above, none of the native speakers referred to the young woman for the second time. On the other hand, both learners did mention her more than once. In this, they may be using what Tarone and Yule (1989: 107) call the strategy of “over-elaboration”, to build in redundancy. Perhaps they lacked confidence and wanted to ensure the message got across. Learners sometimes may give more reasons than native speakers, pay more attention to details, and be overly informative.

Reference:

Tarone, E., & Yule, G. (1989). Focus on the language learner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.