Adjuncts as a diagnostic of polysynthetic word-formation in Inuit (to appear in The Structure of Words at the Interfaces, OUP) (original) (raw)

Abstract

This chapter examines adverb ordering within polysynthetic words in Inuit to shed light on the formation of these words. I argue that this adverb -ordering data poses a challenge to the ‘standard’ account of the Mirror Principle (Baker 1985, 1988b) whereby these complex words are derived via head movement, particularly if other common assumptions regarding antisymmetry (Kayne 1994) and adverb licensing (Cinque 1999) are maintained. Instead, I propose that the variable ordering of these adjuncts is expected if the words containing them are right-headed XPs, following arguments for the existence of right-headed structures by Abels and Neeleman (2012), XP-sized words by Compton and Pittman (2012), and in favour of semantically based licensing of adjuncts by Ernst (2002).

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