Switch Reference and Discourse Anaphora: Lessons from Mbyá

Abstract

Most analyses of Switch Reference treat it as a device that tracks the referents of pivots. Against this background, I show that Switch Reference in Mbyá (Tupí-Guaraní) can track plural discourse reference, so that its analysis must be integrated in a theory of discourse anaphora. Indeed, it appears that Same Subject marking is used when one of the pivots is a quantifier and the other refers to a set associated with the former, or both pivots are quantifiers that share the same domain. Building on these observations, I argue that Same Subject markers themselves are anaphoric to one of their pivots, and require that the other pivot introduce or retrieve a discourse referent that is identical to the value of this anaphor.