Revisiting the clause periphery in Polynesian languages

Verb-initial languages often contain a pre-verbal particle, which, in Polynesian languages, is a tense/aspect/modal (TAM) marker. For Tongan and Samoan, it is standardly assumed that TAM markers are generated in T˚, which are then moved to C˚ in current frameworks (T-to-C movement), meaning TAM and complementisers are in complementary distribution (Custis 2004; Otsuka 2005; Collins 2017). This squib presents novel data from Tokelauan, another verb-initial Polynesian language, showing that TAM particles and complementisers can co-occur, indicating that T-to-C movement is more complex than originally imagined. I propose that an expanded left periphery is needed, with two complementiser positions, and TAM raising to the lower one of these.