The relationship between the Conjunct verb and the complementizer position

In this chapter a subset of the syntactic environments in which Conjunct morphology occurs in Western Naskapi is examined in order to identify the underlying structure of the Conjunct clause. The environments considered are: subordinate clauses; clauses (main and subordinate) containing a wh-phrase; negated main and subordinate clauses (with and without a wh-phrase); and certain non-wh main clauses (which are analyzed as focus constructions). Given that, cross-linguistically, a CP level is associated with both subordinate clauses and with clauses containing a wh-phrase, the principal hypothesis of this chapter is that the varied syntactic environments in which the Conjunct verb occurs all have at least one CP level. It is assumed that wh-phrases raise to the SpecCP position of the Conjunct clause. It is further assumed that the negator which most frequently co-occurs with the Conjunct (ekâ) is base-generated at the head of a CP (Neg-CP) which selects a CP complement; negated Conjunct clauses are thus double CP structures. ¹ Extensive support for these two assumptions appears, respectively, in Chapters 4 and 5.