Ever since they were first described and named by Boas in the early twentieth century, the determiner-like elements known as “connectives” in the literature on Tsimshianic languages have posed a puzzle: though the two branches of the family (Maritime and Interior) are otherwise very closely related, their connective systems appear to be quite distinct. In this paper, I produce a comprehensive analysis of connectives in both branches of the family, showing that the principal difference between them—the apparent case sensitivity of connectives in the Maritime branch—actually reflects a minor parametric difference in the pronoun systems of the two branches, mediated by morphological rules that are sensitive to agreement and adjacency, and that apply identically across the family. Boas’s puzzle is thus resolved.

中文翻译：

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只有连接！Tsimshianic 中的限定词、案例和协议

自从 20 世纪早期 Boas 首次描述和命名它们以来，Tsimshian 语言文献中被称为“连接词”的类似限定词的元素就构成了一个难题：尽管该家族的两个分支（海事和内陆）是否则非常密切相关，他们的连接系统似乎非常不同。在这篇论文中，我对家族的两个分支中的连接词进行了综合分析，表明它们之间的主要区别——Maritime 分支中连接词的明显区分大小写——实际上反映了两者代词系统的微小参数差异分支，由对一致性和邻接敏感的形态规则介导，并且在整个家庭中同样适用。博阿斯的谜题就这样解决了。