Verbal number and aspect in Skwxwú7mesh*

Abstract

This paper examines two productive patterns of reduplication in Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish; Salish), exploring the relation between aspect and verbal number. The paper proposes that the CVC reduplicant, which attaches to both nouns and verbs, is a plural marker; the observed aspectual meanings (e.g., habitual, unbounded iteration) are the salient readings associated with plural events. This paper further proposes that the CV reduplicant, which attaches to verbs only, is an aspectual marker; i.e., it marks the progressive and not a plurality of sub-events. This paper adopts Lasersohn's (1995) account of pluractionality, but proposes that the distributivity requirement is not a necessary condition for plurality in Squamish.

Swarms: Spatiotemporal grouping across domains

“…For instance, Persson 1989 argues for categories based on features like volition and mobility, Pearson 2011 uses intensionality as core feature of a subclass of collective nouns, and Ritchie 2013, in principle, allows for as many classes as there are ways to categorize the space of directed labeled graphs. 3 The comparison between (1) and (2) is still informative, though, for two reasons. First, much of the previous work in the formal semantics of collective nouns has focused on collective nouns like those in (1), making them a good place from which to start a comparison.…”

“…The idea that nouns can denote individuals that are individuated in terms of their spatiotemporal properties is not new (see, for example, Gupta 1980 and Krifka 1990 on phase nouns like passenger which denote stages of individuals in transit), this is novel claim for individuating higher-order collective entities. The goal for the first part of the paper, then, is to formally define the notions of membership and spatiotemporal 3 It is important to highlight Pearson 2011, which draws a distinction between committee-type group nouns and "collection nouns", which might at first pass seem similar to swarm nouns. These are group nouns that require an of -complement headed by an inanimate NP, for example, bunch of flowers, pile of dishes, deck of cards.…”

Motion verbs, sentience, and event delimitedness in Blackfoot

“…Novel evidence for Blackfoot provided in this section builds on two diagnostics that identify whether an endpoint of a predicate is semantically present or not, like the diagnostics used in previous studies (e.g., Matthewson 2004, Bar-el 2005, Bar-el et al 2005, Travis 2010). Before the discussion of new evidence from Blackfoot that is the central part of this article, I provide some background on these diagnostics from the previous studies.…”

“…Before the discussion of new evidence from Blackfoot that is the central part of this article, I provide some background on these diagnostics from the previous studies. The two tests are: (i) culmination cancellation, and (ii) event continuation, from Bar-el (2005). These tests are illustrated in (13a) and (13b) respectively.…”

“…An ongoing event can be continued with a progressive phrase, while a delimited event is incompatible with such a continuation, suggesting that it has an endpoint. For these diagnostics to work, the event in question (in the first conjunct, as in (13)) should be expressed as a perfective (e.g., see Bar-el 2005). Following Dunham (2007) and Armoskaite (2008), I assume that bare forms or past tense forms (as identified in Frantz 2009) in Blackfoot have perfective interpretations.…”