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This paper analyzes the functions of interactional devices used by co-tellers in multiparty stories in Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u, two closely related dialects of a Paman language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Within the Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u speech community there is a strong cultural preference for multiparty storytelling – a preference which has been noted in a number of Aboriginal Australian contexts. This paper seeks to understand the mechanisms through which co-tellers in these multiparty narratives contribute to the story. It first discusses co-teller roles, and distinguishes three key narrator roles and orders of conduct associated with each. The analysis then focuses on the use of questions and evaluative comments used by one type of co-teller, supporting narrators. The following discussion demonstrates that questions and evaluative comments go beyond immediate functions of seeking information or spontaneous expressive reactions. They help to fulfil expectations on supporting narrators to engage actively in the talk. It is additionally shown that these devices have functions in highlighting key aspects of the story and developing stance in intricate ways that complement the main line of the storytelling. The analysis demonstrates the close coordination of co-tellers in constructing a story; piece-by-piece they collaboratively describe and evaluate the story events as a group, prioritizing a local and situated shared telling over other potential story goals like performance and progressivity of a plot. The analysis of Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u storytelling contributes to the field of interaction and narrative studies by furthering our understanding of the organization of storytelling in different cultures and languages contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the functions of represented speech and thought (RST) in narratives in Umpithamu, a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula (Australia). The paper first surveys the different mechanisms available for marking a shift from the narrator's deictic centre to a narrative participant, including a number of constructions that use perception and motion predicates to signal RST. The analysis then focuses on the narrative functions of RST, showing that it has a macrostructural function beyond the representation of a specific participant's speech and thought, more specifically highlighting the central episodes of a narrative. The evidence comes from an analysis of three genres with a different macrostructure: one (personal history) for which the classic Labovian schema of complication–resolution works well and two others (both dealing with the supernatural world) that rely on different structuring principles. It is shown that RST is systematically associated with central episodes across the three genres, and that the location and nature of RST co-vary with the different location and nature of these episodes in the three genres. In narratives of supernatural encounter, for instance, RST conveys modal negotiation about the interpretation of the central events in terms of the supernatural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]