The chapters in this part of the book examine the lexical items that form part of the verb in an Athapaskan language (chapter 6). In addition, this part includes discussion of the position of the verb stem with respect to other lexical items (chapter 5) and the status of the voice/valence markers (chapter 7). It is in this domain of the verb, I argue, that we see the greatest discrepancy between surface ordering and what I claim the underlying ordering to be; semantic factors are a primary determinant in the ordering, but syntactic factors enter in as well. I argue in chapter 7 that the voice/valence elements, like the verb stems, are predicative in nature. I further argue in chapters 5 and 7 that the predicative elements of the verb originate outside of their surface positions and move to them. Finally, I argue in chapter 6 that the ordering of the preverbs, quantificational elements, and incorporates is not unexpected, but is a direct consequence of scopal ordering, with elements of greater scope appearing to the right of those within their scope. In the rest of this chapter, I introduce the reader to the lexical elements of the verb.

Definitions

Recall from chapter 2 that the surface ordering of elements within the verb word of an Athapaskan language is often expressed as a template. The Slave template is repeated in (1); see appendix 1 for templates in a number of languages.