The temporal interpretation of clause chaining in Northern Paiute

ing over the relative tense inside the subordinate (marked) clause produces a property of times that can combine with the main (unmarked) clause through set intersection (or predicate modification; Heim & Kratzer 1998:65), as long as it is adjoined low enough to combine with another property of times. This is much like the semantic composition of a temporal adjunct clause (see, for instance, von Stechow & Grønn 2013:314). There is one property of clause chaining that I have for the most part ignored. In many languages, though not in Northern Paiute, clause chaining marks switch reference (Longacre 2007:399), just as coordination and subordination structures do. To account for switch-reference marking in coordination structures, McKenzie (2012) proposes a compositional semantics that parallels the one that I have proposed for clause chaining. This suggests that there may be a more general compositional mechanism operating at clause junctures, which lies behind both the binding of relative tense and switch-reference markers. With further investigation, I hope that a more comprehensive theory of clause chaining will emerge, embedded within a more general understanding of clause combination. APPENDIX: ON DEVERBAL NOMINALIZATION There are three arguments that the simultaneous suffix is distinct from a homophonous deverbal nominalizer, whose syntax and semantics I have discussed elsewhere (Toosarvandani 2011, 2014b). First, the subject of a nominalization created by -na must be realized overtly. A weather verb, such as tɨɨggwa ‘snow’, normally takes no subject at all (A1). But in the corresponding nominalization, an expletive—the fourth-person clitic—is obligatory (A2a).