Contents -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations and conventions -- 1. The Choctaw language -- 1.1. Locations and numbers of speakers, past and present -- 1.1.1. Mississippi Choctaw -- 1.1.2. Oklahoma Choctaw and Mississippi Choctaw of Oklahoma -- 1.1.3. Louisana Choctaw -- 1.1.4. Other Choctaw groups -- 1.2. Orthography and glossing conventions -- 1.2.1. Orthography -- 1.2.1.1. Traditional orthography -- 1.2.1.2. Mississippi Choctaw orthography -- 1.2.1.3. Modified traditional orthography -- 1.2.1.4. Choctaw Bible Translation Committee orthography -- 1.2.2. Glossing conventions -- 1.3. Sources of information -- 1.3.1. Early and middle nineteenth century materials -- 1.3.2. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century materials -- 1.3.3. Modern sources of textual information -- 1.4. Interpretations of textual material -- 1.5. Choctaw dialects -- 1.6. Related Muskogean languages -- 2. Phonology -- 2.1. Phonemic inventory -- 2.1.1. Consonantal phonemes and their allophones -- 2.1.2. Vowel phonemes and their allophones -- 2.2. Suprasegmental phenomena -- 2.3. Syllable structure and phonotactics -- 2.3.1. Possible syllables -- 2.3.2. Possible onsets and rimes -- 2.3.3. Minimal words -- 2.4. General rules of Choctaw phonology -- 2.4.1. Rhythmic lengthening -- 2.4.1.1. General description -- 2.4.1.2. The reanalysis of rhythmic lengthening -- 2.4.2. Vowel deletion -- 2.5. Rules applying in derivational morphology -- 2.5.1. Assimilations with -li -- 2.5.2. Rules applying in grades -- 2.6. The status of h and glottal stop -- 2.6.1. The standard view of glottal stop insertion -- 2.6.2. Problems with the standard view -- 2.6.3. Vowel lowering as an argument for glottal stop -- 2.6.4. Glottal stop and compensatory lengthening -- 2.6.5. Glottal stops in Mississippi Choctaw of Oklahoma -- 3. Basic syntactic typology.

3.1. An overview of simple sentence types -- 3.1.1. Sentences with only third person arguments -- 3.1.2. Sentences with first and second person arguments -- 3.1.3. Equational, locational, and possessive sentences -- 3.1.3.1. Equational sentences -- 3.1.3.2. Locational and possessive sentences -- 3.1.4. Applicative prefixes -- 3.1.5. Postpositional phrases and other adjuncts -- 3.1.6. Causatives -- 3.1.7. Questions -- 3.1.7.1 Wh-questions -- 3.1.7.2. Yes-no questions -- 3.2. Configurationality -- 3.2.1. Configurationality and verb phrases -- 3.2.1.1. Word order -- 3.2.1.2. Adverb placement -- 3.2.1.3. Proforms -- 3.2.1.4. Coordination -- 3.2.1.5. VP-internal elements -- 3.2.1.6. Binding theory -- 3.2.1.7. Conclusion -- 3.2.2. Configurationality and discontinuous constituency -- 3.2.3. Configurationality and null anaphora -- 3.2.4. Configurationality and agreement morphology -- 3.2.5. Choctaw is not a pronominal argument language -- 3.2.5.1. Omissibility of agreement markers -- 3.2.5.2. The possibility of extraction from NP -- 3.3. Constituent ordering -- 3.3.1. Word order at the sentential level -- 3.3.2. Predicate nominal + copula -- 3.3.3. Main verb + auxiliary -- 3.3.4. Sentence + question particle -- 3.3.5. Noun + postposition -- 3.3.6. Possessor + possessed -- 3.3.7. Noun phrase + determiner -- 3.3.8. Some noncorrelations -- 3.3.8.1. Internally headed relative clauses -- 3.3.8.2. Noun + adjective -- 3.3.8.3. Comparatives -- 4. Noun phrases: Derivation and possession -- 4.1. Derived nominals -- 4.2. Possessive prefixes on nouns -- 4.2.1. Alienably and inalienably possessed nouns -- 4.2.2. Obligatory possession -- 4.3. Nouns with the prefix iC- -- 5. Noun phrases: Order, case marking, and determiners -- 5.1. Order within the noun phrase -- 5.2. Case markers -- 5.2.1. Introduction -- 5.2.1.1. -at and -a -- 5.2.1.2. -ato and -ano.

5.2.1.3. -kia 'too' -- 5.2.2. What conditions the appearance of accusative case marking? -- 5.2.3. Determiner suffixes -- 5.2.3.1. -akoo 'contrastive' and -oo 'focus' -- 5.2.3.2. -ma(k) ' that ' and -pa(k) ' this ' -- 5.2.3.3. -ak 'oblique' -- 5.2.3.4. -akhii 'pejorative' -- 5.2.3.5. -ook 'comparison' -- 5.2.3.6. -ba 'only' -- 5.2.3.7. -makoo and dhmakoo 'too' -- 5.2.4. Against -a- as a determiner -- 5.2.5. Clausal determiners -- 5.2.5.1. -polla 'because' -- 5.2.5.2. -akili 'emphatic' -- 5.2.5.3. -fiihna 'exactly' -- 5.2.5.4. -baano 'only' -- 5.2.5.5. -aash ' previous-mention' -- 5.2.6. Cooccurrence of determiners -- 6. Pronouns -- 6.1. Independent pronouns -- 6.2. Possessive pronouns -- 6.3. Reflexives and reciprocals -- 6.3.1. Reciprocals -- 6.3.2. The verbal reflexive ili- -- 6.3.3. Cooccurrence of reciprocal and reflexive -- 6.3.4. The nominal reflexive ilaap -- 6.3.5. Possible antecedents for reflexives -- 6.3.6. Cooccurrence of the nominal and verbal reflexives -- 6.4. Long distance reflexives and reflexive movement -- 6.5. The pronouns of mother-in-law language -- 7. Interrogatives and indefinites -- 7.1. The morphology of interrogatives and indefinites -- 7.1.1. Uses of the interrogatives and indefinites -- 7.1.2. Interrogatives as verbs -- 7.1.3. Adjunct questions -- 7.1.3.1. 'Why' -- 7.1.3.2. 'How' -- 7.1.3.3. 'When' -- 7.1.4. Quantificational and adjectival interrogatives and indefinites -- 7.1.4.1. 'How much, how many, what kind of' -- 7.1.4.2. 'Which' -- 7.1.5. Locative and nominal interrogatives and indefinites -- 7.1.5.1. 'Where' -- 7.1.5.2. 'Who' and 'what' -- 7.2. The syntax of interrogatives -- 7.2.1. General properties -- 7.2.2. Restrictions on movement -- 7.2.3. Empty Category Principle effects -- 7.2.4. Weak Crossover effects -- 8. Verbal derivational morphology -- 8.1. The transitive-intransitive alternation.

8.1.1. Morphological relationships in the transitive-intransitive alternation -- 8.1.2. The syntax of the transitive-intransitive alternation -- 8.1.3. The semantics of the transitive-intransitive alternation -- 8.2. The causative -- 8.2.1. Introduction -- 8.2.2. Li-deletion and the causative -- 8.2.3. -chi as a marker of affectedness -- 8.2.4. Homophony or polysemy? -- 8.3. Verbal suppletion -- 8.4. Archaic noun incorporation -- 9. Verbal agreement and applicatives -- 9.1. Agreement and person-marking clitics -- 9.1.1. The verbal agreement system -- 9.1.2. The morphological realization of the agreement markers -- 9.1.3. Canonical transitive verbs -- 9.1.4. Split intransitivity -- 9.1.5. Types of transitives -- 9.1.6. Is Choctaw a fluid-S language? -- 9.1.7. Short verbs -- 9.1.8. The verb bannah 'want' -- 9.1.9. Speaker variation in agreement morphology -- 9.1.10. N agreement and negative verbs -- 9.1.11. The order of agreement prefixes -- 9.2. Applicatives -- 9.2.1. Im-, j- 'dative' -- 9.2.2. Ibaa- 'comitative' -- 9.2.3. Imaa- 'ablative' -- 9.2.4. Imi- 'benefactive ' -- 9.2.5. Aa- 'locative' -- 9.2.6. On- ' superessive ' -- 9.2.7. Isht or isht- 'instrumental' -- 10, Aspectual grades -- 10.1. The n-grade -- 10.2. The hn-grade -- 10.3. The 1-grade -- 10.4. The h-grade -- 10.5. The g-grade -- 10.6. The y-grade -- 10.7. The definition of verb stem -- 11. Tense and modality -- 11.1. Modality -- 11.2. Tense -- 11.2.1. -ttook 'distant past' -- 11.2.2. -tok 'past' -- 11.2.3. -h 'default tense ' -- 11.2.3.1. -h on nonpast events -- 11.2.3.2. -h on past events -- 11.2.3.3. Alleged absence of -h -- 11.2.3.4. Alternative analyses of -h -- 11.2.4. -k 'embedded tense' -- 11.2.5. Other proposed tenses -- 11.2.5.1. Nomic tense -- 11.2.5.2. -hatok and -hookat -- 11.3. Tense versus modality -- 12. Evidentiality and illocutionary force -- 12.1. Evidential suffixes.

12.1.1. -aamo 'certainty' -- 12.1.2. -a 'guess' -- 12.1.3. -ba 'no expectation' -- 12.1.4. -chi, -chichook 'unsure' -- 12.1.5. -chiit 'presumed false' -- 12.1.6. -chiichi, -chiichik 'suppose' -- 12.1.7. -chihba, -chishba 'no knowledge' -- 12.1.8. -hli, -hlik, -hnik 'first-hand evidence, certainty' -- 12.1.9. -kgsha 'guess' -- 12.1.10. -ka ''affirmative ' -- 12.1.11. -kig 'emphatic' -- 12.1.12. -tg 'warning' -- 12.1.13. -okii 'emphatic' -- 12.1.14. -ashkii 'exhortation' -- 12.2. Markers of illocutionary force -- 12.2.1. Question particles -o and -a -- 12.2.2. Question particle -ka ' -- 12.2.3. -mat and -cha 'insult ' -- 12.2.4. -kat and -kato 'exclamation' -- 12.2.5. Imperative and prohibitive -- 12.2.6. Question marker -fo -- 12.2.7. Question marker -cho -- 12.3. The syntax of evidentials -- 12.3.1. The distribution of evidentials -- 12.3.2. Default interpretations of evidentials -- 12.3.3. The "according to" construction -- 13. Auxiliaries, semiauxiliaries, and participles -- 13.1. What is an auxiliary? -- 13.1.1. Word order -- 13.1.2. Placement of person markers -- 13.1.3. Occurrence of subordinators -- 13.1.4. Placement of tense and modal morphemes -- 13.1.5. Auxiliary selection -- 13.2. Types of auxiliaries -- 13.2.1. Aspectual auxiliaries -- 13.2.1.1. Tahah, tahlih 'completive' -- 13.2.1.2. Ammohmiha, mmohmichih 'do completely' -- 13.2.1.3. Kaniiyah, kachih 'really, extremely' -- 13.2.2. Positional auxiliaries -- 13.2.3. Evidential auxiliaries -- 13.3. Semiauxiliaries -- 13.3.1. Ishahlih, ishahlichih 'to exceed' -- aatapah, aatablih 'to be too much' -- 13.3.2. (Isht) onah, onaachih 'to do enough' -- 13.3.3. Alhlhih 'truly' -- 13.3.4. Biliiyah 'forever' -- 13.4. Participial phrases -- 13.4.1. The structure of -t phrases -- 13.4.2. Irregular participles -- 14. Adjectives and quantifiers.

14.1. Are adjectives and quantifiers distinct parts of speech?.