Clause dependency relations in East Greenlandic Inuit

• Main Author: Tersis, Nicole
• Other Authors: Structure et Dynamique des Langues (SeDyL), Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco)-Institut de recherche pour le développement IRD : UR135-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), I.Bril
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2010
• Subjects: inuit; subordination; verbal morphology; sentence sequences; [SHS.LANGUE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics; greenlandic
• Online Access: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00724096; https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00724096/document; https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00724096/file/Tersisdependency.pdf

In the dialects of the Inuit continuum (Eskaleut family), two main features of clause subordination stand out: first of all the lack of subordinating conjunctions, as subordinate clauses are indicated by verbal morphology and synthetic devices; second, there is a structural and formal parallelism between several verb forms found in subordinate clauses and possessive noun phrases. Alongside verbal morphology indicating subordination, several markers found within the verb phrase also indicate subordination. Taking examples from East Greenlandic Tunumiisut, we will emphasize the frequency and role of multiple subordinate clause-chaining in discourse. Our findings show that the supposed dichotomy between the verbal markers found in dependent sentences and those found in independent sentences might be less rigid in oral narratives. This leads us to take dependency phenomena into consideration on a different level, that of discursive paragraphs or sequences of sentences. In a general manner, we will exemplify the language's preferential use of synthetic processes to mark clausal subordination.