Coeur d'Alene, also known as Snchitsu'umshtsn, is a Southern Interior Salishan language no longer learned by children. Descriptive work on the language has been carried out since the early nineteenth-century (Tiet 1904 through 1909 in Boaz and Tiet 1930; Reichard 1927-29, 1938, 1939; Doak 1997); however, a formal account of the basic clause structure of this polysynthetic language has until now not been proposed. This thesis presents such a formal analysis within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001a, 2001b; Lasnik 1999a, 1999b, 2000; among others), employing the tenets of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Harley and Noyer 1999; among others). Demonstrating that an analysis of person marking morphemes as bound pronouns (Jelinek 1984) is more "economical" in terms of Chomsky's (1995:367)Elementary Principles of Economy, the thesis goes on to account for the phenomena of lexical affixation (Carlson 1990; Kinkade 1998; Gerdts 2003; among others), in Coeur d'Alene as incorporation. Appealing to Hale and Keyser's (2002) theory of conflation as Head-movement (Harley 2004), an approach to incorporation is proposed which captures Chomsky's (1995) claim that head-movement is phonological while at the same time illustrating that lexical affixes in Coeur d'Alene serve as incorporated arguments. The thesis concludes with an articulation of the left periphery (material above vP here), based on the strict ordering of a series of mood, adverbial, model, and aspectual particles. It is shown that this articulation in Coeur d'Alene patterns with Cinque's (1999) proposed universal hierarchy of functional and adverbial heads. In this way, the basic clause structure of Coeur d'Alene is formally presented

This thesis explores the properties of adjectives and adverbs in Inuit (Eskimo-Aleut), with focus on the Inuktitut dialect group. While the literature on Eskimoan languages has claimed that they lack these categories, I present syntactic evidence for two classes of adjectives, one verb-like and another strictly attributive, as well as a class of adverbs. These categories are then employed to diagnose more general properties of the language including headedness, word-formation, adjunct licensing, and semantic composition. In the first half of Chapter 2 I demonstrate that verb-like adjectives can be differentiated from verbs insofar as only the former are compatible with a particular copular construction involving modals. Similarly, verb-like adjectives can combine with a negative marker that is incompatible with genuine verbs. This contrast is further corroborated by an inflectional distinction between verb-like adjectives and verbs in the Siglitun dialect. A second class of strictly-attributive adjectives is argued for on the basis of stacking, variable order, optionality, and compositionality. The second half of the chapter examines semantic restrictions on membership in the strictly-attributive class whereby only adjectives with subsective and privative denotations are attested. These restrictions are explained by the proposal that Inuit lacks a rule of Predicate Modification, with the result that only adjectives with semantic types capable of composing with nouns via Functional Application can compose directly with nominals. Furthermore, to explain why this restriction does not extend to verb-like adjectives it is proposed that when these modify nominals, they are adjoined DP appositives and compose via Potts’s (2005) rule of Conventional Implicature Application. In Chapter 3 I argue for a class of adverbs, presenting evidence including degree modification, variable ordering, speaker-oriented meanings, and the ability to modify additional categories. Finally, data from adverb ordering is used to compare syntactically oriented and semantically oriented approaches to adjunct licensing and verbal-complex formation. I present arguments in favour of a right-headed analysis of Inuit in which the relative position of adverbs inside polysynthetic verbal-complexes is primarily determined by semantics, supporting Ernst (2002), contra cartographic approaches such as Cinque (1999).

This thesis explores the properties of adjectives and adverbs in Inuit (Eskimo-Aleut), with focus on the Inuktitut dialect group. While the literature on Eskimoan languages has claimed that they lack these categories, I present syntactic evidence for two classes of adjectives, one verb-like and another strictly attributive, as well as a class of adverbs. These categories are then employed to diagnose more general properties of the language including headedness, word-formation, adjunct licensing, and semantic composition. In the first half of Chapter 2 I demonstrate that verb-like adjectives can be differentiated from verbs insofar as only the former are compatible with a particular copular construction involving modals. Similarly, verb-like adjectives can combine with a negative marker that is incompatible with genuine verbs. This contrast is further corroborated by an inflectional distinction between verb-like adjectives and verbs in the Siglitun dialect. A second class of strictly-attributive adjectives is argued for on the basis of stacking, variable order, optionality, and compositionality. The second half of the chapter examines semantic restrictions on membership in the strictly-attributive class whereby only adjectives with subsective and privative denotations are attested. These restrictions are explained by the proposal that Inuit lacks a rule of Predicate Modification, with the result that only adjectives with semantic types capable of composing with nouns via Functional Application can compose directly with nominals. Furthermore, to explain why this restriction does not extend to verb-like adjectives it is proposed that when these modify nominals, they are adjoined DP appositives and compose via Potts’s (2005) rule of Conventional Implicature Application. In Chapter 3 I argue for a class of adverbs, presenting evidence including degree modification, variable ordering, speaker-oriented meanings, and the ability to modify additional categories. Finally, data from adverb ordering is used to compare syntactically oriented and semantically oriented approaches to adjunct licensing and verbal-complex formation. I present arguments in favour of a right-headed analysis of Inuit in which the relative position of adverbs inside polysynthetic verbal-complexes is primarily determined by semantics, supporting Ernst (2002), contra cartographic approaches such as Cinque (1999).