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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Linguistic Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Language. The Unilversitjv of A 1rizonaThis paper provides an analysis of the syntax of Straits Salish, according to which these languages lack a noun/verb contrast at the word level. Main clauses consist of an initial predicate, minimally containing a lexical root, a functional head where valence I ? TRIANSITIVE] is marked, and possibly a pronominal suffix marking an internal argument. The predicate is followed by a second position clitic string of inflectional elements, the subject pronoun and tense. Determiner phrases are derived subordinate structures, adjuncts to the main clause. We present evidence against a copular verb analysis as further substantiation of the lack of a noun/verb distinction at the lexical level. We identify certain properties of quantified contexts in Straits Salish which provide important evidence for our analysis of argument structure.* INTRODUCTION. The languages of the Northwest Coast area of NorthAmerica provide important data for the investigation of lexical categories and X-bar structure in universal grammar. These languages share a number of phonological and syntactic features; the extent to which the distribution of these features represents areal diffusion or remote genetic connections is still unclear. The largest language family in the Northwest is Salish, which in pre-Columbian times extended from Canada into Oregon, and eastward into Montana; the Tsimshian and Wakashan language families of the area are comparatively much smaller. Beginning with Boas 1911 and Sapir 1911, linguists working on the languages of this area have questioned whether they show a contrast between NOUN and VERB as lexical categories, or perhaps have only a 'weak' contrast of this kind. Kuipers 1968 drew attention to how the feature of transitivity bears on the problem. Among those arguing that these languages lack a noun/verb contrast at the word level are Hukari and two anonymous Linnanguae reviewers for their help at various stages in this work. We are particularly grateful to Mark Baker for extensive and very helpful criticism. We are greatly indebted to the publications of Tim Montler on Saanich, and to the work of Aert Kuipers on transitivity in Squamish. Errors are our own responsibility. We also want to record our gratitude to the late Elizabeth Bowman, who shared many hours of fieldwork. We are grateful to the late Al Charles and Victor Underwood, and to Lena Daniels and Agatha McClosky for their patient help with Salish.

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We examine several cases of object movement from various languages, and demonstrate that the syntactic behavior of objects can be derived from certain conditions on LF representations. Conditions on LF relevant to the distribution of arguments are identified as relative scope fixing and type mismatch repair. These two conditions interact with the multiple semantic types that may be assigned to NPs (cf. Partee 1987) to induce movement of certain objects out of the VP, universally by LF and parametrically in the overt syntax. Diesing's (1992b) Mapping Hypothesis combined with the multiple NP types predicts that quantificational NPs in object position will have to undergo movement by LF. This movement is forced by the principles of semantic composition as a mechanism of type mismatch resolution. The existential closure operation over VP is claimed to be genuinely unselective: any NP that introduces a free variable and does not receive an existential interpretation must move out of the scope of existential closure (and thus out of the VP) by LF. Pronouns are variables, limited in semantic type assignment, that by virtue of their definiteness cannot be bound by existential closure and must move out of its scope. In Egyptian Arabic, object pronouns escape from the VP via attachment to a verb that raises to adjoin to an Aspect inflectional head above the VP. The movement of object pronouns and definite/specific NPs in Scandinavian is also associated with verb movement.

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