Obviation Across Clause Boundaries in Kutenai.

Kutenai has an obviation system reminiscent of the systems found in Algonquian languages, in which at most one third person nominal in a clause is proximate and others are obviate. Although the behavior of proximate nominals within clauses and within texts reflects a special status for proximates as having some sort of "higher rank" than obviates, it is concluded that there is no evidence of any syntactic conditions governing obviation across clause boundaries apart from those that also apply within clauses, there can be no more than one proximate per sentence, and coreferential nominals must agree in obviation. In particular there is no evidence of any conditions reminiscent of "binding" conditions, or any conditions by which proximates are preferred in higher positions than obviates. (Contains 10 references.) (Author/MSE) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** OBVIATION ACROSS CLAUSE BOUNDARIES IN KUTENAI' Matthew S. Dryer SUNY Buffalo Abstract: Kutenai has an obviation system reminiscent of the system found in Algonquian languages in which at most one third person nominal in a clause is proximate and others are obviative. Although the behaviour of proximate nominals within clauses and within texts reflects a special status for proximates, as having some sort of 'higher rank' than obviatives, there are no restrictions across clause boundaries within sentences that require that the proximate be higher in the sentence than proximate nominals. 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Kutenai has an obviation system reminiscent of the system found in Algonquian languages in which at most one third person nominal in a clause is proximate and others are obviative. Although the behaviour of proximate nominals within clauses and within texts reflects a special status for proximates, as having some sort of 'higher rank' than obviatives, there are no restrictions across clause boundaries within sentences that require that the proximate be higher in the sentence than proximate nominals. 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY