The distribution and use of aahk- modality in Kainai Blackfoot
Date
2014-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Calgary
Abstract
This study investigates the distribution and use of modality in Kainai Blackfoot in the presence of the morpheme aahk-. By using utterance in context tasks and judgement tasks, I elicited data from three native speakers. This study is limited to combinations of strong and weak modals of the epistemic and deontic type. Modality that uses aahk- in Kainai Blackfoot consists of the combination of the morpheme aahk- and a second (optional) morpheme, which join as a single lexical item based on negation use and surface order. Kainai Blackfoot makes a four-way modal distinction. One distinction is between strong and weak modals and a second is made between epistemic and deontic type modals. However, the weak modals have a level of overlap and can be ambiguous.
Description
Keywords
Linguistics, Algonquian languages, Blackfoot, Siksika language, Morphology, Syntax, Modality
Citation
Lewis, B. (2014). The distribution and use of aahk- modality in Kainai Blackfoot. Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 28(Fall), 49-63.