<p> Arapaho is an Algonquian language with few remaining speakers, but it is well represented in the literature (e.g. Salzmann 1961). The Arapaho dialect of Plains Indian Sign Language has also received a considerable amount of attention (e.g. West 1960). However, there is scant attention to an easily observable property of Arapaho: The manual gestures used by Arapaho speakers are cross-linguistically atypical. The configurations and precision of the gestures, as well as how they are integrated with speech, are much more conventional than what has been reported for other spoken languages. In this dissertation, I take a first step in describing the relationship between gesture and speech in Arapaho, and I use the term 'bimodalism' to underscore the linguistic nature of this relationship. </p><p> I also address the problem of how to approach a description of bimodalism. The classic approach to language description has framed researcher interests, methodologies, and documentational techniques in a way that does not motivate an analysis of the linguistic potential that gesture might have together with speech. I therefore use an interactional approach, which has a methodology and theoretical framework that is more sensitive to bimodalism (e.g. Fox 1987; Hanks 1990; Goodwin 1996; Enfield 2003; Blythe 2010). </p><p> I build on previous work on Arapaho grammar (notably Cowell and Moss Sr. 2008) by using the interactional approach to examine linguistic reference within Arapaho speakers' spontaneous narratives. I argue that hand pointing and spoken demonstratives are complementary resources that Arapaho storytellers use to signal discourse relevance, which involves the relational statuses and spatial arrangements of the characters in their narratives. I show the depth of the relationship between pointing and demonstratives in Arapaho by examining a bimodal construction that I call the &ldquo;viewpoint anchoring construction&rdquo;.</p>

<p> This master&rsquo;s thesis presents language community information, a descriptive grammatical sketch and analysis of structures in <i>maqlaqsyals </i> (Klamath-Modoc), a severely endangered isolate language traditionally spoken in present-day southern Oregon and northern California. The basis for this thesis is data from descriptive grammars from Gatschet (1890) and Barker (1964) as well as further linguistic and academic literature surrounding <i> maqlaqsyals</i>. This thesis is important because there is limited literature on <i>maqlaqsyals</i> that is accessible to the language community and this thesis fills the literature gap. This thesis is an example in practice of linguistic sovereignty. This thesis provides accessible linguistic resources written by an Indigenous community member asserting local control. Additionally, this thesis is crucial because children are on longer learning <i>maqlaqsyals </i> as a first language. Second language speakers must become more knowledgeable of language structure in order to converse with other speakers, setting a future environment in which children can be taught <i>maqlaqsyals</i> as a first language.</p>

<p> Wailaki, a Dene language of northwestern California, is known as what is referred to in academic literature and sources such as the <i>Ethnologue </i> as an &ldquo;extinct&rdquo; language. While Wailaki descendant people may remember an older generation of relatives who spoke Wailaki to one another, as far as is known, there are no people alive today who grew up speaking this language (Golla 2011:81). This term <i>extinct</i> used to describe such languages, however, does not reflect the desire of communities for languages to be spoken again, and the efforts many are taking towards language revitalization. Extinct conveys finality to language loss and shift; however, the term <i> sleeping</i> is today used to describe dormant languages with substantial documentation that may be spoken again (Leonard 2011). Wailaki is one such language. </p><p> For Wailaki, documentation exists; however, no detailed description of the language exists prior to this work. For any scholar and language learner interested in the language, published materials on related languages such as Hupa or Mattole are referenced in order to make sense of available Wailaki documentation. This dissertation puts forth a phonological, morphological, and limited syntactic description of Wailaki, which is a cover term, used by many tribal descendants, for a dialect continuum also known as Eel River Athabaskan/Dene (Golla 2011). </p><p> Chapter 1 gives background information regarding the people, the resources available for analysis. Chapter 2 is a description of phonological processes within the dialect continuum. Chapter 3 is a description of word classes in Wailaki, and what criteria and behavior (either morphological or syntactic) that may be given to delineate classes. Chapter 4 describes the verbal morphology, and Chapter 5 describes the nominal morphology. Chapter 6 titled Clitics and Syntax describes clitics that express categories such as tense, aspect or mode, or perform syntactic functions. In addition, Chapter 6 gives limited description of aspects of Wailaki syntax such as conjunctions, negation, question formation, and some discussion of word order.</p><p>

This dissertation investigates several topics in the morphology, syntax and semantics of the Nez Perce verb and verbal clause. The first part of the dissertation focuses on the morphological segmentation of the Nez Perce verb and on the semantic description of the verb and clause. Chapter 1 provides a grammar sketch. Chapter 2 discusses the morphology, syntax and semantics of verbal suffix complexes for tense, space, aspect and modality. Chapter 3 investigates the modal suffix o'qa, which is variously translated can, could (have), would (have), should, may, and must, and used to make circumstantial, deontic and counterfactual claims. I argue that this suffix has only a non-epistemic possibility meaning, and that apparent necessity meanings are artifacts of translation. Chapter 4 investigates the future suffix u', generally translated will. Based on evidence from truth-value judgment tasks, conjunctions of u' sentences describing incompatible states of affairs, and negation, I argue that u' sentences have non-modal truth conditions. I also discuss challenges to this analysis from free choice licensing and from certain acceptable conjunctions of incompatible u' sentences. The second part of the dissertation explores the syntax of the verb and clause as revealed by the system of case-marking. Nez Perce case follows a tripartite pattern, with no case on intransitive subjects, and both ergative and objective cases in transitive clauses. Transitive clauses may alternatively surface with no case, however. I show that caseless transitive clauses in Nez Perce come in two syntactically and semantically distinguished varieties. In one variety, the subject binds a possessor phrase within the object. Chapter 6 takes up this construction together with possessor raising, which I analyze as involving movement to a &thetas;-position. I argue that the absence of case under possessor-binding reflects an anaphor agreement effect. In the other variety of caseless clause, the object is a weak indefinite. Chapter 7 concludes that such objects are not full DPs. In chapter 8, I propose a morphological theory of case-marking which captures the cased/caseless distinction for transitive clauses. Both ergative and objective cases are analyzed as morphological results of the syntactic system of agreement.

<p> The Nahuatl language spoken by Aztec/Mexica continues to be spoken throughout Central Mexico and in the Huasteca region. Variation within the Huasteca has yet to be fully explored, and this study integrates a questionnaire published by Lastra and interviews I conducted with native speakers representing different communities. The data produced from this were used to find features that distinguish different towns and then were analyzed using cladistics, a phylogenetic method used by biologists to propose a hypothesis of the evolutionary relationships among species, and which has also been used by linguists. The output suggests there is a large split between northwest and southeast regions of the Huasteca, and that the northeast villages compose a subregion on their own. One can trace the relationships between communities on the output tree and follow a path backwards towards Central Mexico, suggesting a north-east migration.</p>