Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

CLAUSE COMBINING IN NOOTKA^245

lackadaisical marking of tense.^13 But the first word of our first text is
marked for past tense (-it) as well as quotative:^14

(14:2)

chief-PAST-QuoT-3 child-have-3 girl-poss

"There was a chief who had as child a daughter".

Other categories that are perhaps projected onto absolutives in these texts,
where they are marked on forms that are also quotative, are -qw with usita-
tive force (30:3) and inferential (37:3). In the texts of personal
reminiscence (nos. 34-38) the past reference is apparently a more salient
characteristic: 7 of the 8 first person singular indicatives in -(m)ah in narra­
tive stretches, and only they, are marked for past tense.

6.4 Simultaneity

A characteristic feature of clause chaining is attention to temporal relations

such as simultaneity vs. succession (Longacre 1985:264-265). A preferred

device for this in Nootka is a suffix -q(h), occurring 27 times in our sample,

indicating simultaneity of the action expressed by the predicate to which it

is attached with another action.^15 Although this commonly translates as a

subordinate clause in while, it does not imply a specific syntactic relation­

ship, and is found in clausal, as well as nuclear, cosubordination. The pred­

icate expressing the other action may either precede, as here, or follow:

(28:6)

say-FiN-QuoT-3-again spear-in-while-FiN-3

"[quotation] he said again, while the spear was stuck in him"

(21:2)

file-MOM-FiN-QuoT-3 sing-while-FiN-3 Deer-son

"Deer began to file; meanwhile he was singing".

It even expresses simultaneity with a suffixal verb in the same word:

(23:9)

sing-while-travel-FiN-QuoT-3

"he sang while traveling along".

Other occurring suffixes for monitoring similar relationships in cosubordi­

nation are -tvp "while" (24:6) and -taq "before" (24:7, 32:12).