The Emergence of Determiner Clisis in Upriver Halkomelem

What results is a mismatch between prosody and syntax, given that the syntactic elements that form a constituent (determiner and noun phrase) are prosodically separated. While such a phenomenon is attested in certain other languages of the Pacific Northwest, such as Kwakw’ala (cf. Anderson 1985, 1992, 2005), the process is restricted in Upriver Halkomelem to connected-speech contexts, and displays a great deal of variability. This study consists of an analysis of two narrative texts told by two speakers of Upriver Halkomelem. The goal of this paper is to explore possible accounts of the development of determiner clisis which assume a strictly syntactic or strictly phonological motivation. It will be shown that both of these analyses are inadequate in accounting for the data. §2 gives a brief overview of determiners in Upriver Halkomelem, while §3 documents the behavior of determiners in narrative texts. In §4 two alternative analyses of clisis in Upriver Halkomelem are outlined and discussed: a syntactic account and a phonological account, and problems with both of these accounts are explained. In light of this, §5 explores a larger context that determiner clisis may fit into, and §6 concludes.