DR. THOMAS E. HUKARI PI
Dr.Donna B. Gerdts CI (SFU)
SSHRCC Research Grant
OBJECTIVES
The project is developing a data base for over 600 verb bases in Hul’q’umi’num’ (Vancouver Island Halkomelelm), a Central Salish language with a view to classifying verbs by their semantics, based on affixes with which they combine. A model of argument structure was developed based on the concepts and constructs of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Mapping Theory. Some key questions that we seek to answer are: How many different types of roots are there with respect to transitivity? Can parallel treatments be given to other constructions that seem to involve levels of transitivity, including passives, antipassives, reflexives, and causatives? How many levels of transitivity are there? How do they map to each other? What levels correspond to overt transitive morphology? How is transitive morphology layered? How do the levels or argument structure map to transitive inflectional positions? The overt marking of transitivity, the variety of tests for class membership, and the rich evidence for inflectional transitivity make Halkomelem a well-suited language for the study of these questions.
PAPERS / PUBLICATIONS/ PRESENTATIONS
"Determiners and Transitivity in Halkomelem Texts,” in D. Gerdts and L. Matthewson (eds.) Studies in Salish Linguistics in Honor of M. Dale Kinkade. University of Montana Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 17, Missoula, in press. (with D. Gerdts)
Halkomelem PRO-determiners as De Facto Case. Workshop on the Structure and Constitutency of the Languages of the Americas, University of Victoria, February 2004. (with D. Gerdts)
Determiners and the Interpretation of Halkomelem Ergatives. Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Boston, January 2004. (with D. Gerdts)
Doubling and Denominal Verb Constructions: The Salish Evidence, 28th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, California, February 2003. (with D. Gerdts)
The Expressions of NPs in Halkomelem Texts. Papers for the 38rd International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages, Lillooet, B.C., 2003, pp. 91-126. (with D. Gerdts)
Halkomelem denominal verbs. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, San Francisco. 2002. (With D. Gerdts)
The morphosyntax of Halkomelem denominal verbs. Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas 7, University of Alberta, March 2002. (with Donna B. Gerdts)
Doubling and denominal verb constructions: Evidence from Halkomelem Salish. Canadian Linguistic Association, Toronto. 2002. (With D. Gerdts)
Numeral Classifiers in Halkomelem. The 37th International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington. 2002. In Papers for the 37th International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages, UBC Working Papers in Linguistics, 2002, 147-180. (With D. Gerdts and M.Q. Hinkson)
Stacking Antipassives in Halkomelem Salish. The Fourth Biennial Conference of the Association of Linguistic Typology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California. 2001. (With D. Gerdts)
Control and passives in Halkomelem. Western Conference on Linguistics, University of Washington. 2001 (With D. Gerdts)
Argument Linking and Passives in Halkomelem. In Papers for the 36rd International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages, UBC Working Papers in Linguistics, 2001, 113-144. (With D. Gerdts)
Multiple Antipassives in Halkomelem Salish, in Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, California. 2001To appear. (with D. Gerdts).
The Dual Structure of Halkomelem Motion Verbs. In Proceedings of the Workshop on American Indigenous Languages 2000, Santa Barbara Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 10, 2001, pp. 33–46.
STUDENTS FUNDED
Kaoru Kiyosawa Ph.D. student SFU
Ryan Riems
Erin Suliak
Sarah Kell