Abstract: Verbs are most often used as heads of predicates. Most verbs are roots that denote events and states. Verbs can take all predicate head enclitics, provided the construction is semantically felicitous. They can undergo semantic valency changing derivation by means of transitivisation. Verbal predicates of dependent clauses can occur without operator enclitics but the clause will have a clausal enclitic attached to it indicating its function and relation to the clause it relates to. A number of subclasses of verbs can be distinguished. Atong has a number of intransitive-transitive lexical pairs. The only aspectual category a nominal predicate with a prototypical noun as its head can express by means adding predicate-head enclitics is negative change of state. Predicatives describing natural phenomena are a small closed class of words. Verbs denoting natural phenomena can express the same grammatical categories as other verbs except imperative. Noun-adjective syncretism is also explained.Keywords: enclitics; noun-adjective syncretism; predicates; prototypical noun; transitivisation; verbal predicates; verbs
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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