Documenting What’s In Almost Every Narrative: Free Relative Clauses in Kiksht

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed morphosyntactic investigation of free relative clauses (FRs) in Kiksht, an Indigenous Native North American Language spoken at the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon. A type of headless relative clause, FRs are embedded clauses that bear formal affinity to wh‑ interrogative clauses yet carry no interrogative meaning and distribute like arguments and adjuncts. Two FR types are attested in Kiksht: maximal FRs, which behave like definite expressions, and existential FRs, which behave like indefinites. A third type of non-interrogative clause is also discussed, which is similar to a free-choice FR but also bears likeness to wh‑ correlatives and wh‑ conditionals. All FR types in Kiksht are formally indistinct, their type and meaning being contextually determined. Kiksht free relatives are also unlike headed relative clauses in the language. Typologically, orienting to Kiksht is relevant because there is little documentation of FRs in Indigenous Native North American languages.