West Greenlandic noun incorporation in a monohierarchical theory of grammar

• Main Authors: Robert Malouf, West Greenlandic Noun Incorporation
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: qimmi-p; Kayak; greenlandic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.23.1476; http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/HPSG/HPSG97/Malouf.ps

this paper, I will present an alternative hpsg analysis of West Greenlandic dvs as a mixed category construction that shares some of the properties of both verbs and nouns. A dv can head a clause like any other verb can. West Greenlandic is an ergative language, so a dv can govern an absolutive argument and, if transitive, an ergative argument. Unlike a verb, though, a dv can also occur with arguments that are characteristic of nouns. For example, nouns can take a possessor in the ergative case: (2) a. piniartup hunter-erg qajaa kayak-abs.3sg `the hunter's kayak' (Fortescue 1984:216) b. kunngip kunngi-p king-erg panippassuaqarpoq panik-passuaq-qar-poq daughter-many-have-3sg.indic `There are many king's daughters (i.e. princesses).' (Sadock 1991:96) As we see in (2b), dvs can, like nouns, also take an ergative possessor. Note tha