In this text from Jiwarli, like in English texts, an entity or participant in the narrative can be referred to in three different ways. First, they may be explicitly named. Secondly, they could be referred to with a ‘pronoun’, where the actual referent is not explicit, but speakers and hearers can understand who or what is being referred to. Thirdly, they may not be referred to by any kind of noun at all, but a hearer can nevertheless understand the identity of the referent. How is this possible? Put simply, this is called a zero anaphor, and is sometimes said to be an occurrence of referent ellipsis. The identity of a referent is to be found in the broader textual or cognitive context of the utterance in question.

Sometimes the situation being described in the sentence makes it very easy to determine who it is that is being ‘ellipted’ (left out) from a sentence. These examples are from the Traditional Mythology text).

Where there is no explicit referent, like in sentence (39) above, the resolution (identity-uncovering) of this kind of ‘zero anaphor’ is based on what is called the ‘lexical semantics’ of the verb. In this case, the verb ‘land’ (maranyjirri). can only refer to the nightjar and bat, because they are the only referents who can fly. In this case, the hearer must have adequate ‘world knowledge’ about the meaning of the verb. This is a ‘pragmatic’ consideration. Additionally, because sentence (38) involves the situation of someone addressing a statement to the nightjar and bat, the hearer can assume that sentence (39) is addressed to the same referent (in the absence of anything telling the hear otherwise).

In other instances of these ‘zero anaphors’, it is not something inherent in the semantic content of the words used which gives clues about the missing item. Rather, it is the surrounding textual context which dictates how the missing element will be analysed.

In these examples, we can understand who is doing the spearing, and who is being speared, from the preceding text. It is theoretically possible for either of the two participants in this stretch of ‘discourse’ to be doing the spearing - we have seen both engage in this activity. The determining factor is that one of the referents must have been understood as the ‘topic’. We can even see a shift in the ‘topic’ between (25) and (26), where ‘the mob’ becomes the ‘topic’, and they are now the people doing the spearing. In English, we would probably put in the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’, but note that these would not actually help us understand who is who.

There is one more way in which hearers can figure out who is doing what. This is a very common grammatical mechanism in Jiwarli, and it is very helpful in uncovering who is doing what actions. In a subordinate clause like in sentence (26) above, the verb (here it is 'pelt') has certain morphology on it which will tell the hearer whether the person performing the action is the same as or different from the ‘actor’ in the main clause. You can learn more about this in the section on verbs. In this case, the gloss says ‘SS’, which means ‘Same Subject’. Thus, we know the mob got up, and so it was also the mob who also intended to do the spearing.