Process and pattern interpretations 161briefly in Section 1 above). Nootka is a language in which complex dis-
course-pragmatic factors affect the basic syntactic choices that modulate
the linear succession of constituents, and not all of this complexity can be
fitted into the simple binary choices of FG pragmatic function assignment.
In part this is a matter of the interface between lexicon and basic predica-
tion. ‘Newsworthiness’ is a complex matter of weighting various
contextual and lexical factors, not one of simple ‘digital’ choices. In other
words, it is hard to argue here for a discrete pragmatic function assignment
level of the classical FG kind.^14
The problem with the lack of Subject assignment, on the other hand, is
that Nootka does have a morphologically marked inverse construction (ex-
tending also to impersonal subject constructions, as in 10), which is in part
a matter of syntactic function level ‘perspectivization’ but is in part also
determined (and quite automatically so) by semantic animacy – similar to
the situation with the inverse construction in Athabaskan languages.
The ‘emic’ (coded) grammatical categories of Nootka appear to be ex-
ceptionally context- (and semantics-) dependent. As regards parts of
speech, Nakayama distinguishes, as we have seen, only verbal and nominal
expressions (apart from uninflected particles), both of which are possible
as arguments in serialized/complement syntactic configurations or as modi-
fiers. Basic clause structure is, as Nakayama puts it, imposed top-down
(Nakayama 1997: 78ff.). It is the basic propositional articulation of the
speech chain that holds it all together structurally.
Here is a language with maximal pragmatic control of syntax – much
inference from context is needed to interpret its syntactic cohesion, though
its pragmatic articulation is transparent. It is a language in which ‘high-
level’ illocutionary or pragmatic factors may reach down all the way to af-
fect the choice between predicate and argument status. There are very few
structural clues to signal this: no inflectional categories are obligatory, and
if these are overtly expressed they are typically attached to the first words
of a phrase, whatever its function, with a multiplicity of functions and
predicate frames being associated with individual lexical morphemes. In
sentences in which constituents expressing time, negation, or other ‘pe-
ripheral’ adverbial elements are chosen as the main clause predicate, as in
(2), context-dependent emphasis of some sort is generally involved – al-
though this is not always strictly a matter of Focus. It may rather be a
matter of default, ‘unmarked’ focusing (e.g. with the negative ‘verb’,
which must come first). The first element chosen in the serialization con-
struction, where there is a choice, is simply the ‘most newsworthy’ in the
broader discourse context.