Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

492 MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN

cross-referenced noun phrases, which can appear on verbs, while nouns

have maximally two inflectional positions for cross-reference. The order is

"A/S" in the first position in the usual case, "O" in the second position, and

"D" (that is, indirect object or Dative) in the third. In nouns, the first posi­

tion is regularly a classifier or predicating pronominal in apposition to the

noun stem, and the second position is a cross-reference to a possessor. It is

immediately obvious that the possessor pronominal series in nouns corre­

sponds to the dative pronominal series in verbs, by complementary distribu­

tion; that is, the genitive or possessive is an "adnominal dative", exactly as

in Djirbal. It is further obvious that the apposition in nouns corresponds to

the intransitive Subject in verbs, or the transitive Patient, "O".

Where do the nominative/absolutive : dative schemata of case-marking

appear in Chinookan? One has obviously just been mentioned, the inflec­

tion for possessive regularly found in nouns, where the cross-reference to

the possessed stem is in first position with form that looks like verbal S/O

inflection, and the possessor follows in second position complementary to

verbal D inflection. A second such nominative/absolutive : dative inflection

is in a certain class of lexical verbs, such as "smell" with "inverse transitive"

inflection that is split between a nominative/absolutive : dative inflection

for certain global combinations of "O" and "D" that follow the noun phrase

lexical content hierarchy, alternating with a derived global transitive

schema, with ergative : absolutive for "D" and "O" that violate the noun

phrase hierarchy as shown in Figure 11. It is, you can see, a global inflec­

tional system with a global ergative vs. a global dative alternation. Precisely

this alternation occurs in the nominal paradigm as well, where the normal

possessive order, with possessed represented in the nominative/absolutive

and possessor in the genitive (i.e., adnominal dative) alternates, in just the

Chinookan Inverse Transitive Split Paradigm (Sensitive to NP Content Hierarchy in

Figure 4):

Figure 11