Ditransitive Alignment in Yakima Sahaptin

The grammatical coding of monotransitive and ditransitive clauses in Sahaptin (Plateau Penutian) demonstrates sensitivity to a range of factors, including animacy, person, topicality and number. The language over-codes participants throughout transitive paradigms, violating principles of economy in both flagging and indexing patterns. For example, a third person agent argument of any monotransitive or ditransitive verb may be case marked in one of three ways, depending on the properties of other participants. In this paper I discuss the categories of ditransitive clauses and describe the multiple ditransitive alignment patterns in the Yakima dialect of Sahaptin