Extraction restrictions in Gitksan
Colin Brown
May 2016 

A'-movement in Gitksan (Tsimshianic) makes a three way morphological distinction between the extraction of transitive subjects, intransitive subjects, and objects (Rigsby, 1986; Hunt, 1993; Davis and Brown, 2011). I argue that despite the descriptive generalisation that Gitksan has a tripartite extraction paradigm, this pattern actually instantiates a general ban on the extraction of ergatives. I suggest that ergative extraction construction in Gitksan involves a nominalisation construction as a alternative to the (illicit) movement of a transitive subject. One piece of evidence for this claim is that the morpheme involved in agent extraction constructions (an) is also a nominaliser. I also present new evidence that a similar construction is utilised in Gitksan to ‘fix’ otherwise illicit long-distance extractions from clauses that attach as adjuncts. This provides a strong piece of counter-evidence to recent claims that head-marking languages cannot have extraction restrictions (Deal, 2016).

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003500 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	McGill University Master's Thesis
keywords:	extraction, ergativity, movement, wh, absolutive, syntax, morphology, gitksan, gitxsan, tsimshianic, salish, morphology, syntax
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