Date of Award

12-1984

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Linguistics

First Advisor

Stephen A. Marlett

Abstract

Work in Relational Grammar has made possible the characterization of such notions as 'passive' and 'reflexive' in terms of grammatical relations and relational changes. More recent work in Italian has revealed evidence supporting the notions of retroherent advancement and cancellation.

This study examines reflexive clauses in Michif, a language with Algonquian verb morphology. It shows (1) that the conditions for the occurrence of the reflexive morpheme and the passive morpheme may be formulated simply using concepts available in RG, (2) that the structure of reflexive Passive clauses involves retroherent advancement, and (3) that there exist initially unaccusative clauses in Michif which also involve retroherent advancements with accompanying reflexive verb morphology.

There is no strong evidence in Michif to support either of the current resolution strategies for multiattachrnents. The question of final (in) transitivity of reflexive clauses, crucial to a determination of their final strata (and thus their complete structure), is a complex one--apparently not answerable in terms of verb morphology alone---for which an adequate syntactic test remains to be discovered.

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