Obviation is not relative to the other participants in the clause, but a discourse or narrative-level phenomenon. Once a referent is introduced into a discourse its obviation level is established and doesn't change from sentence to sentence. Hence you can have a sentence where all participant NPs are proximate, or where all participant NPs are obviate, and have it be perfectly natural in the context of the narrative. Obviation status is chosen for complex pragmatic reasons, but I'm mostly interested in talking about its morphosyntactic effects here. Here's a short narrative to give an example:DesEsseintes wrote:Here we have a sentence with two explicit NPs and neither is marked for obviateness. Does that mean obviation marking is optional? If so, is it really obviation and not just a suffix meaning "other"? I'm asking in earnest, as I'm still learning how obviation works.
ʔayłukkʷθ ʔanix̓ʷƛəłq̓ʷsax̓i:. šinełukk̓a:š łukx̱ wa x̓ʷƛi. šiłakq̓ʷsx̓i:q̓aʔł haʔp̓ašx̓ʷƛpaʔxk. x̓ʷƛx̱ ši:x̓ʷƛk̓a:š miwtełukq̓ʷsx̓e:.
a-i-zuk-kwth a-n-i-xw'd-z-qw'sa-x'ii | shi-n-i-zuk-k'aash zuk-xh wa xw'd-i | sh-i-zuk-qw's-x'ii-q'u'z ha'-p'e-sh-xw'd-pa'xk | xw'd-xh shi-i-xw'd-k'aash miw-tu-i-zuk-qw's-x'ii
DIR-REAL-fish-hold DIR-SS-REAL-knife-APPL:INST-head-cut | 1s.P-SS-REAL-fish-give fish-OBV and knife-POSS | 1s.A-REAL-fish-head-cut-try CONTR-BISEC-1s.A-knife-break | knife-OBV 1s.P-REAL-knife-give SUCC-INV-REAL-fish-head-cut
He picked up a fish and cut off its head with a knife. Then he handed me another fish and his knife. I tried to cut off the fish's head, but the knife broke. He gave me another knife, and it cut off the fish's head successfully.
In that last clause, both the knife and the fish are obviate, having been established as so earlier in the discourse and just so happening to both be involved in the same clause now. One of the participants doesn't stop being obviate just because it's being used in a sentence with another obviate referent.