Auxiliaries and other Categories in Straits Salishan

Abstract

Tests for category membership in Klallam and Northern Straits can be found in the distribution of the constituents of what have been called complex predicates, the first element of which typically has no overt morphology. Among these first elements we can identify a category of auxiliary and three categories of nonpredicative, adverbial intensifier. Verbs, as opposed to nominal and adjectival lexical items, can be identified as the class of lexical items that may follow auxiliaries. Among the remaining lexical items, nouns can be distinguished from adjectives and adjectives from auxiliaries by syntactic position and, in certain constructions, number agreement.