Home Linguistics & Semiotics 13 Non-verbal predication in Lushootseed (Salishan)
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13 Non-verbal predication in Lushootseed (Salishan)

  • David Beck
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Abstract

Like other languages of the Pacific Northwest Sprachbund, the Salishan language Lushootseed makes prodigious use of non-verbal predication. Words from all of the major word classes (noun, verb, adverb, and numeral) are frequently used as clausal predicates in narratives and conversation. The widespread use of non-verbal predicates has its origins in the strict governance of sentence form by Information Structure (Halliday 1985) and a syntactic constraint that the predicate of any clause be its Rheme, irrespective of its part of speech. As a result, Lushootseed provides examples for the full range of morphosyntactic types of non-verbal predication that are the target of this volume.

Abstract

Like other languages of the Pacific Northwest Sprachbund, the Salishan language Lushootseed makes prodigious use of non-verbal predication. Words from all of the major word classes (noun, verb, adverb, and numeral) are frequently used as clausal predicates in narratives and conversation. The widespread use of non-verbal predicates has its origins in the strict governance of sentence form by Information Structure (Halliday 1985) and a syntactic constraint that the predicate of any clause be its Rheme, irrespective of its part of speech. As a result, Lushootseed provides examples for the full range of morphosyntactic types of non-verbal predication that are the target of this volume.

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