Abstract
This paper contributes to recent lines of inquiry addressing the nature of indices in definite expressions. The primary language of investigation is Washo, a North American isolate spoken in the western United States. Building on previous claims about the structure of anaphoric definites, I propose a unified analysis of the Washo DP that lends novel evidence to the claim that indices are best thought of as syntactic objects in their own right, independent from D. The structurally encoded index—introduced by a head idx—is shown to be overtly realized by the morpheme gi/ge in both pronouns and demonstratives, as well as at the periphery of internally headed relative clauses, which are themselves complex DPs. An important aspect of this proposal is the argument that idx can play two related semantic roles: The semantic index it hosts can be interpreted either as a variable, as previously proposed for familiar definites, or itself as a variable binder. The availability of the latter explains the appearance of gi/ge in internally headed relatives. I show moreover that the exponence of idx in Washo is sensitive to the type of complement it takes, a proposal that makes sense of the observed distribution of gi/ge in a range of definite expressions.
Highlights
The paper argues for a unified theory of DP structure in Washo according to which structurally-encoded indices are present as expected in familiar definites, and in internally headed relatives, a type of complex DP
The puzzle posed by internally headed relatives from the perspective of the syntaxsemantics interface is that relative clauses of this type are essentially propositions with the addition of nominalizing morphology at their periphery (Langdon and Munro 1979; Culy 1990)
The analysis presented offers a unified view of the Washo DP according to which pronouns, demonstratives, anaphoric bare definites and internally headed relatives all host an index within their structure
Summary
This paper contributes to recent work on the nature of indices through the investigation of Washo, a North American isolate spoken around Lake Tahoe in the United States. I argue that evidence from Washo lends support to an analysis along these lines; Washo wears morphology of this kind on its sleeve in that the proposed structural index in Washo is overtly realized as the morpheme gi/ge.1 Evidence for this claim is initially drawn from the distribution of this morpheme in definite expressions, namely third person pronouns (1) and demonstratives (2).. (2) Demonstrative [DP hádi-gi pélew ] Mú:biP-i DIST-GI jackrabbit 3.run-IND ‘That jackrabbit ran.’ Based on this distribution, I first argue for a unified structure of the Washo DP according to which the morpheme gi/ge is the spell out of an index-encoding head idx within the extended projection of N.
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