COMPLEX PREDICATES WITH NOUNS AND STATIVE VERBS IN LAKOTA: A ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR ANALYSIS Jan Ullrich The Language Conservancy In Lakota (Siouan) nouns (N) frequently occur adjacent to stative verbs (SV). Extant de- scriptions of Lakota grammar treat the <N1SV> as a syntactic compound in which the SV modifies the N. The present study offers a novel analysis that shows that the N and SV are uncompounded and that postnominal modification occurs only when the <N1SV> sequence is RP-internal, whereas in clause-final position it functions as a complex predicate. This anal- ysis solves numerous outstanding issues from several areas of Lakota grammar including modification, modifier phrases, noun incorporation, inalienable possession, compounding, word formation, stress position, referentiality, and information structure. [Keywords: Lakota, complex predicate, coordination and cosubordination, modifica- tion, prosody] 1. Introduction. 1 In Lakota (Siouan, ISO 639-3), nouns (N) frequently occur syntactically adjacent to stative verbs (SV). Extant Siouan literature treats [IJAL, vol. 86, no. 3, July 2020, pp. 407–446] © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0020-7071/2020/8603-0003$10.00 DOI 10.1086/708833 1 The data in this study originates in connected speech rather than from translational elicitation. About half of the data comes from a text corpus based in narratives and dialogues recorded primarily by the author between 1992 and 2019 from several hundred native speakers in Lakota communities in North and South Dakota. The other half originates from older Lakota texts collected before 1950s, namely from collections transcribed by Ella Deloria. Sources of data are indicated with the following abbreviations: DT (Deloria 1932), EDT (Ella Deloria Texts in the Boas Collection), BT (Buechel’s text collection, 1978), BBBJ (stories recorded from Ben Black Bear Jr., between 2004 and 2019), CHE (Clara High Elk, narratives, 2008), CWE (Charlie White Elk, narratives, 2009), DBE (Dave Bald Ea- gle, narratives, 2007–8), DTA (Delores Taken Alive, narratives recorded between 2005 and 2019), DW (David West, narratives, 1992–2010), FFC (Frank Fools Crow, narratives, unknown date), FREH (Florine Red Ear Horse, narratives, unknown date), IEC (Iris Eagle Chasing, narratives and dia- logues, 2003–19), JHR (Johnson Holy Rock, narratives, 2003–7), JKS (Jerome Kills Small, narra- tives, 2007), LGH (Lakota Grammar Handbook [Ullrich 2016]), ML (Mary Light, narratives, un- known date), NLD (New Lakota Dictionary [Ullrich 2008]) NSB (Neva Standing Bear, narratives, unknown date), SLH (Shirley Left Hand, narratives, 2014–19), RFT (Rudy Fire Thunder, narratives and dialogues, 1992–93), RTC (Robert Two Crow, narratives and dialogues, 1998–2019). A partial archive of the narratives can be found in the Lakota Language Forum (https://www.lakotadictionary .org/), although the archive is being gradually moved to the Lakota Language Consortium YouTube channel (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?vplV25mDW3oMA). I want to thank Ben Black Bear Jr. and Iris Eagle Chasing for their help with grammaticality judgment on a couple of sentences whose word order was experimentally shuffled. I also want to express my gratitude to two anonymous reviewers who provided thoughtful comments on the manuscript. I thank Robert Van Valin for comments on an earlier version of this study.