Semantic agents, syntactic subjects, and discourse topics: How to locate Lushootseed sentences in space and time
Beck, David,, 24, 277-317 (2000),
doi = https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.24.2.03bec,
publicationName = John Benjamins,
issn = 0378-4177,
abstract= The Salishan language Lushootseed has been claimed to lack both syntactic subjects and morphosyntactically transitive clauses, a problematic stance from a universalist/typological point of view. This paper offers evidence both for the syntactic role of subject in Lushootseed and the existence of transitive clauses, and examines the sentence- and discourse-level properties of Lushootseed subjects that make them essential for the grounding of events and discourse in both space and time. Their centrality to the discourse-organization of the language, and hence their recoverability, allows their frequent — and, in transitive clauses, obligatory — elision from the surface form of sentences.,
language=,
type=