The Algonquian Inverse is Syntactic: Binding in Passamaquoddy

Abstract

Treatments of the obviation and direct-inverse systems of Algonquian languages commonly invoke a participant hierarchy and re-linking of grammatical roles according to that hierarchy, or agreement that indexes that hierarchy directly. I show that positing this hierarchy is unnecessary: obviation depends on c-command, and the direct-inverse opposition is one of syntactic movement. I outline a theory that depends only on grammatical roles, c-command, and movement. This theory accounts straightforwardly for variable binding in Passamaquoddy, given the commonly invoked c-command condition on variable binding, where other theories make the wrong predictions. Moreover, in a complete theory of agreement in Algonquian, reference to syntactically encoded grammatical roles cannot be avoided. Since it is necessary to refer to syntax, both for agreement and for variable binding, the most parsimonious theory is one that refers only to syntax, and eschews a hierarchy of dubious status in the grammar, or the interaction of constraints on the alignment of such hierarchies.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.