The Syntax and Semantics of Stem Composition in Ojicree
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THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF STEM COMPOSITION IN OJICREE by Tanya Slavin A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Linguistics University of Toronto © Copyright by Tanya Slavin 2012 Abstract The syntax and semantics of stem composition in Ojicree Tanya Slavin Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Linguistics University of Toronto 2012 This thesis explores the structure of the verb stem in Ojicree, a dialect of Ojibwe. I argue that the surface complexity of the stem structure in this language can be explained if we distinguish between two types of roots: strong roots and weak roots. Strong roots combine with a verbal head to build a full stem. I call these simple stems. Weak roots build a more complex structure. Their combination with a verbal head is not enough to build a complete verb stem and some additional material needs to appear to the left of the root to form a full stem. I refer to these stems as complex stems and to the requirement posed by the weak roots the left-edge requirement. In the traditional templatic view of the Algonquian stem weak roots correspond to an element called ‘pre-final’ or the lexical portion of the concrete final. Strong roots fall into the traditional slot ‘initial’. In the first part of the thesis I argue that weak and strong roots build two fundamentally different structures. Complex stems (build from weak roots) are dynamic syntactic constructs, while simple stems (build from strong roots) need to be stored. I bring both syntactic and phonological evidence for this distinction. In the second part of the thesis I explore the nature of the left-edge requirement in complex stems, arguing that it is a semantic constraint that has to do with event composition. Weak roots are semantically deficient elements, and the left-edge element fills a gap in their semantics and completes event composition. The syntactic composition of the stem reflects event composition. Finally, I extend the idea of the left-edge requirement to a certain type of noun-incorporation construction. The proposed analysis advances our understanding of the Ojicree morphosyntax by moving away from the traditional templatic view of the stem, situating it within the current syntactic framework of Minimalism and proposing answers to some long-standing questions from a new perspective. More broadly, it furthers our understanding of how words are formed in the Algonquian languages and in polysynthetic languages in general. ii Acknowledgements First, my heartfelt thanks goes to the speakers of Ojicree who have helped me over the years to both learn the language and learn about it, and without whom this work simply would not have been possible. Ojicree has been part of my life since my earliest days in Canada. In 2003, after about two weeks in the country, I decided that it was high time to start learning a native language and immediately signed up to audit an Introductory Severn Ojibwe course at the University of Toronto. This has allowed me to both learn a fascinating new language and meet many great people. Thank you to Alex McKay for first introducing me to Ojicree, for encouraging me to go up north and connecting me with people there. Thank you to the many speakers who had the patience to work with me over the past seven years: Jimmy Beardy, Clara Kaomi, (the late and much missed) Ethel Keesikwayaash, Don McKay, Sheba McKay, Frances Mekenak, Sharon Mosquito, Agnes Saakakeesic, Ruby Winter and Mary Ann Winter. Thank you especially to Agnes and Ruby for the many hours of skype fieldwork over the last year of writing, and for their willingness to answer any last-minute questions. I would also like to express my gratitude to the members of Kingfisher Lake First Nation for granting me the privilege of being part of their community for a few weeks every year. I will not try to mention all of you here because I am sure to forget someone, and because so many of you were so warm and welcoming to me every time I came. Thank you for speaking Ojicree to me from the first day, for encouraging me to speak the language, for making fun of the things I said wrong. I hope we will meet again soon. Kihci-miikwehc! I am deeply grateful to the late Janet Mekenak, one of the most amazing people I have ever met, for first welcoming me to the community and for long evening hours of stories and sipping tea together. I feel fortunate to have known you. Kika-kwenawenimin! The most valuable lesson that I learned during my graduate studies at the University of Toronto is that while research is a solitary activity, it is never done in a vacuum. I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who have helped me get through this in various ways. I thank my committee members, Elizabeth Cowper, Keren Rice and Susana Bejar for supporting me every step of the way. I am grateful to Elizabeth, my supervisor, for being a constant source of support, encouragement and ideas, and for helping me to stay organized and on track no matter how far away I was geographically. Keren has been my mentor from my very first day in graduate school, and I am so grateful to her for sharing her amazing intuitions about language and linguistics, for teaching me to be respectful of the data, and for being the best example of a linguist I could hope to find. I thank Susana for so many insightful comments on the last versions of this thesis. I am also thankful to the two other members of the examining committee, Diane Massam and Norvin Richards, who provided thoughtful and provocative feedback during the defense. There have been other members of the department who have contributed to my experience as a graduate student. Thanks to Elan Dresher for his phonology classes, to Peter Hallman and Michela Ippolito for their insights about semantics, and to Alana Johns for first introducing me to fieldwork and sharing her intuitions about Ojibwe. I am grateful to the linguistics department at McGill for welcoming me as a visiting student in the last year of my graduate studies. My special thanks to Glyne Piggot, who read and commented on drafts of chapters, and provided feedback and encouragement. Discussions with iii Lisa Travis were also most beneficial. Thanks also to the participants of the McGill Syntactic Interfaces Research Group for all our interesting discussions. I am looking forward to two more exciting years with you all! I would also like to extend my thanks to the larger linguistic community. I am grateful to the many Algonquian linguists at other universities who provided feedback at various points: Solveiga Armoskaite, Julie Brittain, Phil Branigan, Clare Cook, Amy Dahlstrom, Rose-Marie Déchaine, Eric Mathieu, Jeff Meuhlbauer, Glyne Piggott, Richard Rhodes, Rand Valentine, and Chris Wolfart. Likewise, I thank the audiences at various conferences and other venues for their feedback: the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto Phonology workshop, Algonquian conference, NELS, CLA, WSCLA, SSILA, Berkeley Workshop on Affix Ordering in 2008, Yale linguistic lunch series, and others. This work has been supported by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, U of T Open Fellowships, and the CRC grant in linguistics and aboriginal studies to Keren Rice, which I gratefully acknowledge. I thank my friends and fellow graduate students Sarah Clarke, Sandhya Chari, Liisa Chocorlan, Chiara Frigeni, Vanessa Hardy, Lidia Jarmasz, Maria Kyriakaki, Sara MacKenzie, Marina Sherkina-Lieber, Sasha Simonenko and Ulyana Savchenko for being there when I needed them. Extra thanks to Chiara for taking over the childcare duties up north. I cannot thank Sarah enough for her care and support, which helped me to stay sane over these years, for babysitting, and, of course, for “the rest of the fun”. Thank you to my family across the ocean for their love and support: my mom and dad, Alexander and Svetlana Mozias, and my brothers and sister Lena, Ilia, and Grisha. Lastly, I thank my two favourite people in the world, Philip and Yannai. Philip - for his relentless love, encouragement, and belief in my abilities, and Yannai - for being the best motivation out there to keep working. Without you two I wouldn’t have made it. iv Table of contents ABSTRACT II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III TABLE OF CONTENTS V ABBREVIATIONS VIII CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW 1 1.1 The problem 1 1.2 Proposal 3 1.3 Ojicree: preliminaries 5 1.3.1 The Ojicree language and speakers 5 1.3.2 Previous work on Ojicree and Ojibwe 7 1.3.3 A note on orthography and glosses 9 1.4 The Ojicree verbal morphology 10 1.4.1 The verbal complex 10 1.4.2 Four verbal categories 12 1.4.3 The structure of the stem from the traditional perspective 13 1.4.4 Abstract vs. Concrete finals 15 1.4.5 Preverbs 21 1.4.6 The traditional view and the present proposal 23 1.5 Theoretical preliminaries 24 1.6 Layout of the thesis 27 CHAPTER 2 TWO TYPES OF STEMS 29 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 Simple stems vs. complex stems: structural arguments 34 2.2.1 Domains of word formation 34 2.2.2 Idiosyncrasy vs. predictability 36 2.2.3 Productivity 45 2.3 Phonology: Palatalization 53 2.3.1 Background on the Ojicree phonological system 55 2.3.2 Theoretical assumptions 57 2.3.3 Earlier views of palatalization 57 2.3.4 Palatalization and two types of stems 58 v 2.3.5 Palatalization triggered by morphemic i’s in simple stems 65 2.3.6 Summary 70 2.4 Complex stems are formed in syntax 71 2.4.1 Visibility in syntax 72 2.4.2 The left‐edge constituent is a phrase 75 2.5 Conclusion 80 CHAPTER 3 VERBAL HEADS 82 3.1 Introduction 82 3.1.1 Theoretical assumptions