Adverbial and Argument-Doubling Clauses in Cree - MSpace

verbal complex, it is able to have proximate and obviative status assigned to its arguments
independently of the main clause verb. Obviously, discourse and semantic conditions
apply, but there is no syntactic obligation for the arguments in the adverbial clause to
maintain the obviation status awarded to the main clause arguments. Two examples
demonstrating this are given below.
The first sentence in (77) is provided to put the second sentence, a complex
sentence with an adverbial clause, into conte*.
The verbal complex in the first sentence
sijwéhtêw 'he(prox) set out' has a single pronominal argument acting as agent. The
infiection on the verb indicates that the argument is proxirnate and sinylar. This role is
continued into the adverbial clause of the following sentence, as indicated by the
proximate singular morphology on the AI subordinate verb 2h-pîhtokëi 'when he(prox)
entered'. The referent in both of these verbal complexes is the central character of the
story, Wisahkêcâhk. However, in the matrix clause, the proximate role has been re-
assigned to a difTerent referent. The agent argument in the matrix verbal complex îthu
'he(prox) - said thus to him(obv)' is r-linked to an A-doubling NP w2rnistikdsiw 'the
Frenchman'. It is this argument that is now proximate. This is clearly indicated by the
unmarked form of the A-doubling noun, the use of the demonstrative ma
'this', which is
reserved for proximate nouns, as well as the proximate singular agent morphology on the
matrix verb. Therefore, we see that we have a proximate shift occumng between an
adverbial clause and the main clause. It is identical to the proximate shifts we saw in the
previous section between sentences.