Quantification in Straits Salish

Abstract

Whatever we say with the help of names can be said in a language which shuns names altogether. To be assumed as an entity is, purely and simply, to be reckoned as the value of a variable. In terms of the categories of traditional grammar, this amounts roughly to saying that to be is to be in the range of reference of a pronoun. Pronouns are the basic media of reference; nouns might better have been named propronouns. The variables of quantification, ‘something’, ‘nothing’, ‘everything’, range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged propositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true. (Quine, 1953)

This paper owes much to the generous help of Emmon Bach, Angelika Kratzer, and Barbara Partee, who carefully read earlier drafts and gave me detailed comments. I also want to thank other Salishanists who have given me help: Dick Demers, Brent Galloway, Dale Kinkade, and Tim Montler. I have benefited greatly from their published material and field notes they have kindly made available to me. Montler’s thesis on Saanich morphology and Phonology has been an invaluable aid. I am grateful to Aert Kuipers for his comments, and also to Andy Barss, David Basilico, Maria Bittner, Molly Diesing, Ken Hale, and Kumiko Murasugi for fruitful discussion. The analysis of Straits Salish syntax given here is based on my field work on Lummi and Samish during the summers of 1982–1988. I am grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Philosophical Society for financial support, and I want to record my gratitude to the Straits Salish speakers I have consulted: Lena Daniels, Victor Underwood, Al Charles and Agatha McCloskey. Thanks also to Ethel Underwood for her help. Al Charles died in 1982 and Victor Underwood in 1988. Errors that remain despite the efforts of all the above are my own responsibility.