Propping up predicates

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modifying an inanimate noun appears in the same ... animate noun, a more complex construction is used: ..... •I am deeply grateful to Marie-Louise Bouvier-.
Propping up predicates BE-support in Tłı̨ chǫ Yatıı̀ Nicholas Welch University of Toronto

Tłı̨ chǫYatıì •aka Dogrib •Dene (Athapaskan) family •spoken between Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes

SSILA, 4 January 2013

Nicholas Welch, University of Toronto

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Structure of the talk 1. Adjectives in Tłı̨ chǫ Yatıı̀ 2. Adjectives and copulas 3. The problem – the syntactic representation of animacy 4. Proposal – animacy and number 5. Numberless inanimates 6. Parallelism of VP/AP 7. Copulas as a rescue strategy 8. Synchronic implications 9. Diachronic implications 10. Appendix 1: more evidence 11. Appendix 2: classificatory verbs – an unrelated system SSILA, 4 January 2013

Nicholas Welch, University of Toronto

3

Adjectives in Tłı̨ chǫ Yatıı̀ • A very small class of words (