A grammar of relationship. How Mi’kmaw verbs indicate the relationship between participants in a sentence

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dc.contributor.authorFriesen, Dianne
dc.contributor.supervisorSaxon, Leslie
dc.date.accessioned2022-04-27T19:55:45Z
dc.date.available2022-04-27T19:55:45Z
dc.date.copyright2022en_US
dc.date.issued2022-04-27
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Linguisticsen_US
dc.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy Ph.D.en_US
dc.description.abstractIn this thesis we ask, how are arguments introduced and mapped to grammatical positions in Mi’kmaw? We build on insights from Piggott (1989), Wiltschko (2014), and Harley (2017) and use a corpus of over 150 verb stems in 1500+ clauses. We propose that Mi’kmaw verb stems are classified by whether they are unergative or unaccusative. Three functional categories: little v, Animacy agreement, and Voice introduce the other argument and then map the arguments to grammatical positions through two overlapping processes. We illustrate active, passive, antipassive, and possessor raising constructions. These argument-building and mapping systems work without exception throughout the language. This thesis represents a fresh analysis of Mi’kmaw which accounts for transitivity, valence, and grammatical voice in a way that the traditional Bloomfieldian analysis (Inglis 1986, Fidelholtz 1999, McCulloch 2013) has not. We believe that our findings are only possible because of my close collaboration with Mi’kmaw colleagues, our decision to systematically investigate how the functional categories pattern with a large set of verb stems, and our decision to study the syntax of the verbs in complete clauses.en_US
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduateen_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationDenny, Yvonne, Arlene Stevens, Elizabeth Paul, Barbara Sylliboy, and Dianne Friesen. (2021). A ditransitive analysis of possessor raising in Mi’kmaw: Distinct licensing for possessor and possessum. Papers of the 50th Algonquian Conference, ed. Monica Macaulay and Meg Noodin, 81-96. Madison: University of Wisconsin.en_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationFriesen, Dianne. (2021). Learning Indigenous Methodologies. Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle of the University of Victoria, vol. 31, ed. Junyu Wu and Martin Desmarais, 119-131. Victoria: WPLC, Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria.en_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationFriesen, Dianne and Yvonne Denny. (2019). Zero morphemes in two categories in Mi’kmaq. Proceedings of the 23rd Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of the Languages of the Americas, ed. Daniel K. E. Reisinger and Roger Yu-Hsiang Lo, 53-61. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics.en_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationStevens, Arlene, Yvonne Denny, Barbara Sylliboy, and Dianne Friesen. (2021a). Two pluractional constructions in Mi'kmaw. Proceedings of the 2020 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistics Society, London, Ontario. ed. Angelica Hernández and M. Emma Butterworth, 11pp. Toronto: Canadian Linguistic Association.en_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationSylliboy, Barbara, Elizabeth Paul, Serge Paul, Arlene Stevens, and Dianne L. Friesen. (2017). The light verb -eke in Mi’kmaq. Papers of the 48th Annual Algonquian Conference, ed. Monica Macaulay and Margaret Noodin, 255-274. Madison: Michigan State University Press.en_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationSylliboy, Barbara, Arlene Stevens, Yvonne Denny, and Dianne Friesen. (in press). Causative construction in Mi’kmaw. Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Algonquian Conference, ed. Monica MacAulay and Margaret Noodin, 20pp. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/13887
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectsyntaxen_US
dc.subjectAlgonquian languageen_US
dc.subjectMi'kmawen_US
dc.subjectgrammatical voiceen_US
dc.subjectverb classen_US
dc.subjectcausativeen_US
dc.titleA grammar of relationship. How Mi’kmaw verbs indicate the relationship between participants in a sentenceen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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