Morpheme Order and Semantic Scope
Word Formation in the Athapaskan Verb

This book offers a rich and theoretically informed survey of verb structure in Athapaskan languages.

Keren Rice (Author)

9780521024501, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 March 2006

468 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.8 cm, 0.692 kg

'This book treats virtually all of the important matters pertaining to the grammatical features of the Athapaskan verb word, in depth for an impressive number of individual languages and in sumptuous comparative detail for languages representative of the family as a whole …The book contains at least a dozen detailed and interesting discussions of the ordering of elements in the Athapaskan verb word. It contains much more than this, however. New analyses of many aspects of the Athapaskan verb are developed. These are consistently of great value and full of the insight and scholarship we have come to expect from this fine linguist and Athapaskanist … Rice's book is a treasure. Though it is organized around the theme of morpheme order, it is a rich source of both problems and solutions in Athapaskan linguistics generally and deserves to be considered a classic in the field.' Ken Hale, Diachronica

Athapaskan languages are well known for their intricate morphology, in particular the complexity of their verbs. The significance of these languages for linguistic theory is widely acknowledged. In this book, Keren Rice offers a rich typological survey of morpheme ordering in Athapaskan verbs, with implications for both synchronic grammar and language change. She shows that verb structure is in fact widely predictable across Athapaskan languages if appropriate syntactic factors and an overarching principle of semantic scope are taken into account. The presentation also includes a detailed study of argument and aspectual systems. This landmark volume was the first major comparative study of its type for the Athapaskan language family, combining descriptive depth with a contemporary theoretical perspective. Clear and insightful, it will interest Athapaskanists, typologists, historical and theoretical linguists alike.

1. Introduction: beginning the journey
Part I. First Steps: 2. Introducing the problem
3. Global uniformity and local variability: a possible account
Part II. The Lexical Terms: 4. First stop: introducing the lexical items
5. A brief side trip: the position of the verb stem
6. Ordering of the lexical items
7. Voice/valence
8. Summary: lexical items
Part III. The Functional Items: 9. An introduction to the functional elements
10. Pronominals
11. The aspect system
12. Qualifiers and their ordering
13. On the ordering of functional items
Part IV. A View of the Lexicon: 14. The scopal hypothesis and simplifying the lexicon
15. Evidence from the lexicon
Part V. The End of the Journey: 16. Looking back, looking ahead
Part VI. Appendices: Appendix 1. Templates and affix ordering
Appendix 2. The languages
Appendix 3. Summary of constraints and language differences
Notes
References
Indexes.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK]