Interclausal and intraclausal linking elements in Hul’q’umi’num’ Salish

This study investigates linking elements in Hul’q’umi’num’, the dialect of Halkomelem Salish spoken on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Hul’q’umi’num’ has two interclausal linkers: the coordinator ʔiʔ and the subordinator ʔəw̓. In addition to occurring in straightforwardly biclausal constructions, these linking elements also occur between a variety of modals and adverbs and the elements they modify, raising the question: are such constructions monoclausal or biclausal? The morphosyntactic evidence, based on the placement of subject NPs, enclitics, auxiliaries and subordinate suffixes, reveals that these adverbial constructions do not form a homogenous group. Adverbial constructions with ʔəw̓ are always monoclausal, while modal and adverbial constructions with ʔiʔ range from monoclausal to biclausal. I argue against an analysis that assumes homophones of ʔiʔ, but instead propose that its range of uses can be related to the notion of topicality. I demonstrate that very similar multifunctionality is attested for conjunctions in other languages.