Typologically relevant peculiarities of the switch reference system in Yukaghir

Abstract

The switch reference (SR) system in Yukaghir exhibits certain characteristics that supplement and partly correct some of the typological generalizations formulated in Haiman and Munro (1983: ix–xv). The central observation made here is that SR in Yukaghir is not primarily a syntactic but a semantic phenomenon which interacts with syntactic and pragmatic factors. It is assumed that this finding is cross-linguistically valid. This analysis is based on a number of published primary and secondary sources as well as on unpublished fieldwork data.