Subordination and Cosubordination in Nootka:
Clause Combining in a Polysynthetic Verb-initial Language
William H. Jacobsen, Jr.
University of Nevada, Reno
0. Language type
Out of consideration to bibliographers I have put a truncated version of my
subtitle on the masthead, the full version of which is: Clause combining in
a polysynthetic verb-initial head-marking non-configurational reference-
dominated genderless accusative-type suffixing language. Here I have trot
ted out a series of labels that have been propounded during the history of
typological study of languages, that are each intended to place them on one
side of a dichotomy or into one of a low number of categories that are
reasonably fundamental to a language's structure. Let us briefly remind
ourselves of their import. By polysynthetic I mean that there is a high aver
age number of morphemes in a word (cf. Greenberg 1954).! Nootka words,
especially verbs, can contain a sequence of suffixes expressing a variety of
concepts, such as aspect, mode, causation, and possession, as well as more
concrete concepts. The language also has its version of noun incorporation,
although distributionally it is a matter of verbs suffixed to noun stems.^2
Verb-initial labels the predominant clause word-order pattern, which is
VSO (verb-subject-object). Variants having orders VOS and SVO are
occasionally to be found, as well as common truncated versions VS, VO,
SV, and just V.^3 Since the pioneering study of Greenberg (1963) it has
become well known that word order patterns such as this, especially the two
polarized ones of verb-initial and verb-final, tend to predict other charac
teristics of a language, notably the ordering of constituents of various
phrase types, and attempts at explanation have been made (cf. especially
Vennemann 1972, Lehmann 1973, and Hawkins 1983:29-31 and passim).^4
