Raising and long-distance agreement in Passamaquoddy: A unified analysis

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of two constructions in the Eastern Algonquian language Passamaquoddy in which the position of the object of a verb of cognition (‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘remember’, ‘wonder about’, ‘suspect’) is linked, either by apparent raising or by apparent long-distance agreement, to a position within a clausal complement to the verb. The latter position may be arbitrarily deeply embedded. The analysis developed here, formulated in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, demonstrates that the two constructions in fact represent alternative realizations of identical argument structures for the verbs in question and that the apparent long-distance dependencies involved can be accounted for in terms of a purely local principle of argument selection.