Online and offline bridging constructions in Korowai

Korowai has two main types of bridging constructions, recapitulative linkage (also known as “tail-head linkage”) and summary linkage with generic verbs of doing, each with two subtypes that follow from the grammatical distinction between chained and adverbial or thematic types of clause combining. Recapitulative linkage with chained, switch reference marked clauses is by the far the most frequent type of bridging construction. It has three functions. First, a processual function, to give the speaker and addressee a processing pause in between two often lengthy clause chains. Second, it creates chains of clause chains, so called chaining paragraphs. The third function is to enable the speaker to continue referential tracking in the transition from one clause chain to the next. Recapitulative linkage with thematic subordinate clauses shares the processual function wih the chained type but it signals discourse discontinuity: it disrupts the event and participant lines and the speaker goes off the event line. Summary linkage allows speakers to be less specific in the scope of their anaphoric linkage, not necessarily taking the final clause of the previous sentence as their reference clause.