Obviation is perhaps most commonly discussed in connection with languages of the Algonquian family in which (i) multiple 3rd person nominals in a certain domain must be assigned either proximate or obviative status; (ii) proximate nominals are described as more discourse prominent; (iii) coferential patterns are governed by the proximate-obviative contrast; and (iv) the mapping between proximate and obviative nominals and grammatical function may be signalled on the verb direct and inverse morphemes. Each of these features has factored into definitions of obviation (Aissen 1997, Bliss 2017, Hammerly 2020, Oxford 2017).

A growing body of work has investigated phenomena across unrelated languages which share some or all of the above properties, raising questions about the underlying source and representation of obviation-related phenomena. For instance, Underhill (2021) shows that obviation is not restricted to 3^rd person nominals in Ktunaxa, a language isolate spoken in Canada and in the United States. Aissen (1997) and Deal & Royer (2023) also show that Mayan languages, although lacking overt obviation morphology, exhibit obviation-like restrictions on certain combinations of 3^rd person arguments in active verb forms. Adopting a crosslinguistic perspective, we aim to understand the relationships among phenomena related to obviation as well as the formal mechanisms underlying them.

This workshop is supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant, The Grammar of Hierarchy Effects. It is organized by project PI Jessica Coon (McGill University) and PhD candidate Anne Bertrand (UBC & McGill University), and includes the following invited participants: