Restructuring and Clause Structure in Isbukun Bunun

This paper studies the restructuring phenomenon in Isbukun Bunun, which exhibits special morphology and syntax that distinguish it from sentences containing common infinitives. I demonstrate that a subclass of predicates should be analyzed as restructuring predicates in Isbukun Bunun, since they apparently create transparent domains for syntactic operations such as passivization and clitic placement. I argue that the lack of clause-boundedness effects in restructuring follows trivially from the functionally impoverished structure of the restructuring infinitives, so that this construction lacks clausal properties throughout the derivation.