Predicates and Pronominal Arguments in Straits Salish

Abstract

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Verb‐Initial Word Orders, Primarily in Austronesian and Mayan Languages

“…A number of researchers have proposed that these languages lack a distinction between verbal and nominal categories, either at the level of the root or the word (e.g., Jelinek and Demers 1994;Kaufman 2009;Tozzer 1921, and works cited therein). Other researchers argue that lexical category distinctions exist, but the evidence for these distinctions may be quite subtle (Chung 2012;Davis and Matthewson 1999;Lois and Vapnarsky 2006;Richards 2009).…”

On the Functional Determination of Lexical Categories

“…We will provide evidence from both English and Salish that roots must be specified as being either nouns or verbs before they merge with D or v, and indeed independently of any syntactic environment they might appear in. The Salish facts are particularly striking, since Salish languages have provided a paradigm case for those who wish to dispense with lexical categories (Kinkade 1983, Jelinek and Demers 1994, Jelinek 1995. The evidence that we will present argues for the universality of the N-V distinction (following Demirdache and Matthewson 1995), and thus in favor of an endoskeletal 'vertebrate' version of phrase structure, rather than the exoskeletal 'invertebrate' version favored by Marantz and related work.…”

A Cross-Linguistic Perspective on the Expression of Manner

“…3 For reasons of space, we will not discuss this issue here. The reader is referred to the cited work for arguments, as well as Jelinek 1995, Jelinek and Demers 1994, Demirdache and Matthewson 1995 …”