This thesis is the first work devoted specifically to the syntax of wh-questions in a Southern
Interior Salish language. As such, it provides a descriptive foundation for future work on the
syntax of Okanagan, as well as forming the basis for comparative investigation of wh-questions
both within the Southern Interior branch of the Salish family and between the Southern Interior
and other better known branches.
Chapter 2 examines the basic word order patterns for clauses and describes the distribution of
determiners and complementizers in cleft constructions.
Chapter 3 compares three potential analyses of wh-questions for Okanagan: a wh-in-situ
analysis,, a wh-movement analysis, and a cleft analysis. I show that a wh-in-situ analysis was not
viable for Okanagan on the basis of a comparison of word order possibilities in non-wh sentences
and wh-questions. I then turned to the other two possible analyses, a wh-movement analysis along
the lines of English, and a cleft analysis, as suggested for other Salish languages by Davis et al
(1993) and Kroeber (1991, 1999). Choosing between these analyses proved much more difficult:
evidence exists both for and against each analysis, and I was unable to choose between them.
Chapter 4 examines multiple wh-questions in Okanagan. It appeared possible for at least some
speakers to produce multiple wh-questions with either two argument wh-phrases or an argument
and an adjunct wh-phrase. The latter type of multiple wh-question showed an interesting type of
reverse superiority effect: speakers consistently preferred to place the argument wh-phrase in preverbal
position and the adjunct wh-phrase in post-verbal position. If this really is a superiority
effect, it implies that the relative structural positions of adjuncts and arguments are the opposite of
those found in English.
Chapter 5 investigates long-range wh-dependencies. First of all, I established that such
dependencies are indeed possible. I show that long-range dependencies are sensitive to at least
three standard island constraints: the Complex Noun Phrase Constraint, the Wh-Island Constraint
and the Adjunct Island Constraint.
Though I was unable to choose between a wh-movement and a wh-cleft analysis for wh-questions,
my research unequivocally establishes the existence of A-bar movement dependencies
in Okanagan. This is demonstrated by the existence of long-range movement assymetries as
shown by superiority effects in multiple wh-questions and by the existence of adjunct island
effects which argue strongly that there must be a configurational basis for the argument/adjunct
distinction contra the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis (see Jelinek and Demers 1994 on
Northern Straits Salish).
Another important consequence of this work is the distinction between two types of focus
structure in Okanagan. On the one hand, as in other Salish languages, a nominal predicate
(including a wh-predicate based on the argument wh-words swit and stim') may occur with a
relative clause introduced by the determiner i?; on the other hand both adjunct and argument DP's
(including wh-adjuncts) may occur in cleft structures introduced by one of the complementizers
ki?and ta?. Though this distinction corresponds in some ways to that between 'bare' and
'introduced' clefts in other Salish languages (see Kroeber 1999, pg. 370-373), the details of the
introduced cleft construction in particular differ in significant ways from the rest of Salish. It
remains to be seen how other Southern Interior languages behave in this respect.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11977 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Baptiste, Maxine Rose |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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