Issues in Salish Syntax and Semantics

Davis, Henry; Matthewson, Lisa

doi:10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00145.x

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(66 reference statements)

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“…Putting aside future tense, which is often argued to be a modal or have modal properties (Enç 1996; Condoravdi 2002; Portner 2009), it seems that in some varieties of the Inuit language, past tense is an obligatory grammatical category and in others, it is not. This is reminiscent of some of the tense variation among the Salish languages, as described in Davis and Matthewson (2009).…”

Section: Tense and Aspect In Eskimo‐aleutmentioning

confidence: 70%

Eskimo‐Aleut Languages

Johns

2010

Language and Linguist. Compass

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This article provides an overview of some key properties of Eskimo‐Aleut languages. It discusses the geographic range and number of speakers of these languages, some of which are seriously endangered. It also provides examples and discussion of the polysynthetic nature of some of these languages, where a single word can have the interpretation of a sentence. An intriguing property of the Aleut language is its anaphoric agreement, which provides challenges for syntactic analyses. Within Eskimo‐Aleut, we find languages that seem to lack tense, while closely related members have a finely graded tense system.

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Section: Tense and Aspect In Eskimo‐aleutmentioning

confidence: 70%

Eskimo‐Aleut Languages

Johns

2010

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…Nie?kepmcxfn is a severely endangered Northern Interior Salish language (for overviews of Salishan, see Kinkade 1992, Czaykowska-Higgins and Kinkade 1998, Kroeber 1999, Davis and Matthewson 2009. The data presented here' come from original fieldwork with two speakers of the Lytton (Xq'amcin) dialect.…”

Section: Relative Clauses In Thompsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Focus on head-final relatives

Koch

2013

Can. J. Linguist.

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Head-final relatives in Nɬe?kepmcxín (Thompson River Salish) have previously been described as rare. This article presents new data illustrating a range of possible head-final relatives and the discourse context in which they occur. The difference between head-initial and head-final relative structures is accounted for by information structure, namely the position of focus. When focus falls on the entire NP containing the relative clause, a head-initial relative is generated. However, when focus falls on the relative clause itself, excluding the head noun, a head-final relative is used. The effect inside complex nominals is to linearize focus before background, matching the FOCUS ≫ BACKGROUND generalization observed in matrix clause focus marking. The study is the first examination of focus marking inside the Salishan nominal domain.

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“…Like Nɬeʔkepmxcín and SENĆOŦEN, St’át'imcets uses syntactic structure (clefting or direct predication) at the left edge to mark focus (Davis and Matthewson 1996, Davis 2005, 2007, 2012). The two possible loci for accent in St’át'imcets, then, are the initial stressed vowel (the focused element) and the final stressed vowel, as in Nɬeʔkepmxcín.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

St’át'imcets intonation contours: a preliminary study

Caldecott

2016

Can. J. Linguist.

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Acoustic research on the prosody and intonation of Northwest Coast languages has until recently been under-researched. This paper joins the growing body of research on the subject and reports on the results of the first study of intonation in St’át'imcets (Lillooet Salish; Northern Interior Salish). It tests the generalization proposed by Davis (2007) that information structure is not correlated with prosody in Salish languages by comparing the intonation contours of declaratives and yes/no questions. Specifically, I ask two questions: is nuclear accent rightmost? And are yes/no questions associated with higher pitch, as predicted by the Universality of Intonational Meaning? Results are comparable to those reported for other Salish languages, namely Koch (2008, 2011) on Nɬeʔkepmxcín, Jacobs (2007) on Skwxwú7mesh and Benner (2004, 2006) and Leonard (2011) on SENĆOŦEN. Nuclear accent is associated with the rightmost stressed vowel, regardless of focus, and while no speaker signals yes/no questions with a final rise, each has higher pitch within typologically common parameters.

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Issues in Salish Syntax and Semantics

Abstract: The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo-European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, e.g

Cited by 15 publications

References 36 publications

Eskimo‐Aleut Languages

Eskimo‐Aleut Languages

Focus on head-final relatives

St’át'imcets intonation contours: a preliminary study

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