Introduction

This book provides an account of the distribution of the Algonquian Conjunct verb from the theoretical perspective of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 1998). The majority of the examples which appear in this study are taken from Western Naskapi, a dialect of the Central Algonquian language referred to as the Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi language complex (hereafter referred to as the CMN complex). ¹ However, the conclusions arrived at in this book have implications which extend not only to dialects of the CMN complex, but to members of the Algonquian language family in general. Western Naskapi is spoken in the northern Quebec community of Kawawachikamach on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula of northeast Canada. The CMN complex is the most widely spoken aboriginal language in Canada with approximately 60,000 speakers (Foster 1982) distributed from the Rocky mountains in the west to as far east as the Labrador coast.