Yakkha (Kiranti language family, Nepal) has several constructions where speech act participants (SAP) and third persons are not treated alike. Such effects are found in the treatment of agents and patients of two-participant constructions, but also in the treatment of theme and goal arguments of three-participant constructions. This paper explores the referentiality effects on case marking and verbal agreement of theme and goal arguments. Crucially, most effects are scenario-based, i.e. they are conditioned not only by the properties of one argument, but by the relation between theme and goal. Besides the distinction between SAP and third person, the animacy of arguments can play a role, so that the argument realization in one construction is often conditioned by an interplay of several factors. Apart from alternations in case and agreement, Yakkha exhibits a serialization pattern that is related to an atypically high animacy of theme arguments. After analyzing these alternations and their conditions, the paper discusses how the findings match predictions that have been made about argument realization in threeparticipant constructions. German Academic Exchange Service DAAD (2011). It is due to the EUROBabel project Referential Hierarchies in Morphosyntax (RHIM) and the questionnaire on three-argument constructions designed by Anna Siewierska and Eva van Lier that I started investigating referentiality effects in three-argument verbs in Yakkha systematically. I would like to thank Eva van Lier, Françoise Rose, an anonymous reviewer and Lennart Bierkandt for their helpful comments on an earlier version. My deepest gratitude goes to the members of the the Yakkha community, without whom my research would simply not be possible:
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