1 The phenomenon Case-marking and object interpretation in Nez Perce: towards an antipassive analysis *

• Main Author: Amy Rose Deal
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: Perce; greenlandic; inuktitut
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.169.3536; http://people.umass.edu/partee/Gen_Neg/_docs/Deal-NzPfieldwork.pdf

Nez Perce has two types of two-argument clauses: 1. “Ergative ” type. Subject and object are case marked; subject and object agreement appear on the verb. 2. “Antipassive ” type. Neither subject nor object is case marked; subject agreement appears on the verb, but object agreement does not. subject agr subject case object agr object case “ergative ” Y Y Y Y “antipassive ” Y n n n intransitive Y n (1) Iin-im ciq’amqaal-nim pée-p-teetu nukúu-ne ERG (TRANS) type 1SG-GEN dog-SUBJ 3/3-eat-HAB meat-OBJ ‘My dog eats meat’ (2) Iin-im ciq’ámqaal hi-p-teetu nukt ANTIP type 1SG-GEN dog 3SUBJ-eat-HAB meat ‘My dog eats meat’ (3) hi-páayna háama INTRANSITIVE 3SUBJ-come man ‘The man arrived ’ (Rude 1986: 126) In this talk, I will present novel data from my fieldwork on the clause type alternation. From this data, I will argue that Nez Perce clauses like (2) are indeed antipassives, akin to better known examples from West Greenlandic and Inuktitut (Bittner 1987, Wharram 2003). We will see evidence for antipassivization in the following domains: • proper name referentiality • the preferences of the verbs héki ‘see ’ and haní ‘make’ • the scope of intensional transitives and héenek’e ‘again’ • the distribution of oykala ‘all ’ [preliminary]