Intransitive Transitivity: The Derivation of Syntactically Intransitive Two-Place Predicates in Séliš-Ql̓ispé

Abstract

In this dissertation I investigate the structure of syntactically intransitive sentences in Séliš-Ql̓ispé (Southern Interior Salish) using a Distributed Morphology framework. I focus, in particular, on some of the ways in which transitive or dyadic meaning may be achieved in a sentence that is morphosyntactically intransitive. Thus, this dissertation focuses on describing the structure and derivation of sentences which do not bear a transitivizing suffix and which use the subject markers associated with intransitive sentences, and yet still are understood to involve two participants, most particularly if those participants are an agent and a patient/theme.I begin with a discussion of simple intransitive sentence structures and semantically dyadic sentences in which two participants are involved, but neither acts as an agent, such as possessives and locatives (i.e. dyadic unaccusatives), then I turn to sentences with a more traditional agent-patient semantic transitivity. Intransitive sentences with such traditionally transitive meanings are most commonly formed around verbs derived via antipassivization, noun incorporation, or through the use of a transitive continuative structure, which I argue is the re-verbalization of a deverbal noun. I describe how the derivation of verbs of each of these types may be modeled in a DM framework, and describe how these models can account for the stereotypically transitive meanings assigned to syntactically intransitive constructions.