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In Mabaan, a Western Nilotic language, there is a binary inflectional voice contrast in the morphology of verbs. In addition to a morphologically unmarked basic voice, there is a fully productive applicative voice, which is morphologically marked. This applicative voice may be called circumstantial in order to distinguish it from another applicative voice, which is derivational, namely benefactive. The circumstantial voice turns an adjunct into an object, making an intransitive verb transitive and a transitive verb ditransitive. In a main clause, however, a transitive verb needs to be detransitivized via antipassive derivation in order for an adjunct to become object through the circumstantial voice. In some types of subordinate clauses, by contrast, any verb can get the circumstantial voice, whatever its transitivity, derivational status and meaning. This voice is obligatory in relative clauses when the relativized constituent is an adjunct and in some types of adverbial clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the value of derivational information in predicting the inflectional behavior of lexemes. We focus on Latin, for which large-scale data on both inflection and derivation are easily available. We train boosting tree classifiers to predict the inflection class of verbs and nouns with and without different pieces of derivational information. For verbs, we also model inflectional behavior in a word-based fashion, training the same type of classifier to predict wordforms given knowledge of other wordforms of the same lexemes. We find that derivational information is indeed helpful, and document an asymmetry between the beginning and the end of words, in that the final element in a word is highly predictive, while prefixes prove to be uninformative. The results obtained with the word-based methodology also allow for a finer-grained description of the behavior of different pairs of cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that verbs in Matlatzinca (Otomian; Oto-Pamean; Oto-Manguean) fall into five inflectional classes, which the authors call 'conjugations'. The article focuses on the forms that make up the paradigms of these five classes. The conjugations of Matlatzinca are based on inflectional constructs that are largely periphrastic in composition, which means that the exponents in the constructions are not prefixes but behave like prosodic words, independent from the lexical stem of the verb being inflected. However, such exponents are not verbal auxiliaries but grammatical markers. We also show that class membership of the conjugations is determined by transitivity value. Three of the classes contain only transitive verbs, while the two remaining ones contain only intransitive verbs. One of the intransitive conjugations contains middle verbs. Transitive verbs are inflected as members of this middle class to obtain passive or middle voice readings. Wherever possible, the constructions are illustrated with examples from natural speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IE languages developed different strategies for the encoding of the passive function. In some language branches, the middle voice extended to the passive function to varying extents. In addition, dedicated derivational formations arose in a number of languages, such as the Greek -ē-/-thē- aorist and the Indo-Aryan -ya-presents. Periphrastic formations involving a verbal adjective or a participle are also widely attested, and played an important role in the building of the passive paradigm in e.g. Romance and Germanic languages. As the periphrastic passive is also attested in Hittite alongside passive use of the middle, both strategies seem to be equally ancient. Some minor strategies include lexical passives and the extensive lability of verbs. A survey of possible strategies provides evidence for the rise of a disparate number of morphemes and constructions, and for their ongoing incorporation into the inflectional paradigms (paradigmaticization) of given languages, thus adding to our knowledge about cross-linguistic sources of passive morphology and grammaticalization processes involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative analysis of existential and standard negation across Northern Dene. There are two strategies for existential negation: some languages use a negative verb, while others use a negative morpheme reconstructed as * də-weˑ. Standard negation involves negative inflection in some languages; most of them require additional preverbal or postverbal negative particles. The languages without negative inflection also fall into two groups. Some use a preverbal morpheme reconstructed as * də-weˑ , while the others use a postverbal negative auxiliary related to the negative verb used in existential negation. The data surveyed here demonstrates that standard negation with * də-weˑ is widespread in the Northern Dene languages, suggesting that it is an older negation strategy than has been assumed in the literature. The author also shows that the postverbal auxiliary is the result of the negative existential cycle and demonstrates that Dene languages share typological tendencies for the placement of negative particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generation of regular and irregular inflected verb-forms has been taken as a crucial test between models of inflection in the mental lexicon, namely approaches which invoke different mechanisms for regular and irregular forms (rule-based procedures vs. recovery of whole forms stored in an associative network) and accounts which postulate a single procedure for all forms. An alternative hypothesis suggests that inflectional processes are explained by membership of words to clusters, for instance, Italian inflectional classes (conjugations). In a behavioural and a rapid event-related fMRI experiment, participants overtly generated the past participle of verbs from the three Italian conjugations. Results showed that the cognitive operations and the neural substrate underlying inflectional processes rely on specific properties of inflectional classes. Different patterns of cortical activations elicited by verbs from different conjugations were detected for the first time in the left middle frontal gyrus, left pre-supplementary motor area and left anterior cingulate cortex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present electrophysiological study investigated irregular versus regular verb form processing in Swedish during reading. In line with previous results from other languages, overregularized verbs, i.e. incorrect irregular stem + regular past tense suffix combinations (e.g. * stjäl + de 'steal + past tense'), elicited a left-lateralized negativity (LAN) relative to correct irregulars (stal 'stole'), suggesting rule-based decomposition of regularly inflected words. Lack of a similar effect for misapplication of the irregular stem formation pattern on regular verbs (e.g. * löft 'lifted' instead of lyfte) suggests the involvement of different processing mechanisms, possibly whole word access, for irregular items, at least to some degree. A P600 showing reprocessing was seen for all incorrect forms. The results add cross-linguistic support for morphological decomposition in the verbal inflection of a language where results from previous neurolinguistic studies of nominal inflection have only suggested the use of full-form access to words. • ERPs of both overregularized and irregularized verbs in Swedish were recorded. • LAN obtained for overregularized verbs suggests rule-based decomposition. • Irregularized verbs elicited only a P600 relative to the correct variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study aims to disentangle the often‐confounded effects of input frequency and morphophonological complexity in the acquisition of inflection, by focusing on simple and complex verb forms in Japanese. Study 1 tested 28 children aged 3;3–4;3 on stative (complex) and simple past forms, and Study 2 tested 30 children aged 3;5–5;3 on completive (complex) and simple past forms, with both studies using a production priming paradigm. Mixed effects models for children's responses were built to test the prediction that children's verb use is explained by the relative bias in input frequency between the two inflectional forms. Although Study 1 did not show a significant effect of input bias (apparently due to problems with item selection), Study 2, which corrected for this problem, yielded the predicted relationship. These findings suggest that input frequency effects, at the level of different inflectional forms of the same verb stem, hold even after controlling for morphophonological complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch has a construction consisting of a verbal part and something else: ′wɛrksə 'enjoy your work' (< werk 'to work'), ′rujzə 'enjoy your rowing' (< roei 'to row'). According to accepted wisdom, this 'success imperative', as it is known in the literature, consists of an imperative and a pronoun ze 'them'. The paper challenges the standard analysis and investigates two alternatives: an imperative form plus a modal particle, and a verbal stem plus an inflectional ending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the logic behind the various morpho-phonological subdivisions in the verbal system of Palestinian Arabic. It argues for the importance in the understanding of Palestinian Arabic of the apophonic chain proposed for Classical Arabic in 1993). In Palestinian, it is first argued, the Measure 1 perfective template includes a hard-wired association of its two vocalic positions; the main differences in vocalization between the Palestinian and Classic varieties follow from this fact. The account is then extended to include three large subclasses of weak verbs. Following the analysis of Classical Arabic in 1996), it is argued that such verbs involve a null element ø, whose realization is determined by the apophonic chain. The second part of the paper provides an account of the entire inflectional paradigms of each of the verbs discussed, a task that was not fully undertaken in previous work. The mechanism of apophony is shown to be at work in this domain, too. An interesting case is discussed of an apparent shift in inflectional paradigm in some forms of the biradical verb. This shift is again shown to follow from the general mechanisms used in the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The verbal suffixes of Seri (a language isolate of Sonora, Mexico) divide the lexicon into classes of unparalleled complexity. The paradigm has only four forms, which mark subject number and aspect (or event number), yet there are over 250 distinct types in a corpus of just under 1,000 verbs. This relation of forms to types means that by information-theoretic measures this is among the most complex inflection class systems yet studied. In part this complexity is due to the sheer wealth of allomorphs and the freedom with which they combine within the paradigm; however, these properties can be found in all inflection class systems of any complexity. The unique property of Seri is that although the suffix morphology and the morphosyntactic paradigm have the same featural content, the two systems are not directly coordinated. Both suffix morphology and verbal morphosyntax are based on the concatenation of markers of plurality, and an increase in the morphological marking of plurality reflects a morphosyntactic accumulation of subject and predicate plurality (i.e. aspect). In this sense, morphology is a direct exponent of featural content. But there is no consistent mapping between the two systems, and the precise calibration between morphological form and morphosyntactic function must be lexically specified; it is this specification that increases dramatically the number of inflectional types. Seri therefore represents a middle ground between the conceptual extremes of morphosyntactically motivated and morphologically autonomous morphology that serve as a basis for much of our theory building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbs in San Pedro Amuzgo, an Oto-Manguean language of Mexico, often have two different stems in the paradigm, one used with singular subjects and the other with plural subjects. This split motivated by number is typologically interesting due to its rarity, since number splits are commonly along the S/O vs. A distinction, not the S/A vs. O distinction. Apart from at stem level, the split is also manifested in the incompletive of an inflectional class of verbs. At stem level the plural stem is derived in a variety of unproductive ways, making the relation between singular and plural stems, synchronically, one of suppletion. In this article, we study the distribution and the morphological properties of this split in depth, using a sample of almost 600 fully inflected verbs from a large database compiled by native linguist Fermín Tapia and now publicly accessible on the Surrey Morphology Group's website. We also place it in a typological context, relating it to other systems we have observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidentiality - a grammatical expression of information source (, ) - is often expressed on a clausal level, and its marking is associated with the verb. In a few languages, a noun phrase can acquire its own evidential specification. Evidentiality can be expressed autonomously, or be fused with another grammatical category, including aspect, tense, or mood for verbs, or spatial distance and topicality for noun phrases. We investigate interactions and dependencies between evidentiality and other grammatical categories, both verbal and nominal. A number of such dependencies is supported by the diachronic development and history of evidentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a typological characterization of a class of demonstratives so far neglected in the literature: demonstrative verbs expressing manner. First, the morphological characteristics and syntactic behaviors of these demonstratives are examined to illustrate their verbal properties and to justify categorizing them as verbs. Next, their exophoric and endophoric roles in narratives and interactions are described. As their discourse usages closely replicate that of nominal demonstratives, we argue that demonstrative verbs belong to the class of demonstratives and propose to integrate them in a general typology of demonstratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allocutivity is a term coined to describe a phenomenon in Basque whereby, in certain pragmatic (and syntactic) circumstances, an addressee who is not an argument of the verb is systematically encoded in all declarative main clause conjugated verb forms. Although the term has been exclusively applied to Basque, similar phenomena are found in other languages as well. Indeed, despite certain differences in the degree of grammaticalization and usage, allocutive verb forms are attested in at least Pumé (isolate; Venezuela), Nambikwara (isolate; Brazil), Mandan (Siouan; North America), and Beja (Cushitic; Northeast Africa). The aim of this article is to propose a typology of verbal allocutivity in a crosslinguistic perspective, taking into consideration the locus of encoding, the manner in which it is encoded, the information concerning the addressee which is encoded, and the syntactic environments in which it can appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Verb processing is largely described across languages as being impaired in agrammatic aphasia, i.e., non-fluent aphasia with so-called “telegraphic style”. Although both lexical and morphosyntactic errors have been reported in the literature, this paper questions the claim that impaired access to verbs is a hallmark of this clinical syndrome. Aims: The present study aims to assess how agrammatic verb processing is impaired in two languages with distinct grammatical properties: Basque and French, and to test hypotheses that suggested an access deficit to verbs on this new database. Moreover, the nature of agrammatic verb errors is analysed from an interdisciplinary neuropsycholinguistic perspective according to which aphasic symptoms should be interpretable at different levels of organisation of language processing involving neural, cognitive and linguistic aspects. Methods & Procedures: A protocol built on Basque and French grammatical properties was designed in order to assess whether errors are specific to verbs, whether they are lexical or morphosyntactic and whether the verb argument structure complexity increases lexical and morphosyntactic processing difficulties, in both production and comprehension. One Basque-speaking and one French-speaking patient with agrammatism and matched controls were assessed on various oral tasks (object and action naming; sentence production and comprehension; prepositional phrase production), each of them containing 20 pictures displayed on a computer. Data were collected using a digital recorder. Outcomes & Results: Results show that agrammatic speakers produced many lexical verbs of every argument structure type. Errors were specifically morphosyntactic and increased with the verb argument structure complexity. However, verb errors were different in Basque and French due to their distinct morphosyntactic properties. In addition, whereas errors appeared in French in the use of prepositions, case morphology was well preserved in Basque, raising the issue of considering distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underlying different morphological systems. Conclusions: This paper supports the view that Basque and French agrammatic data collected from this study do not result from a lexical-access deficit. However, this interpretation depends on how one considers inflected verbs to be processed (endolexicon or exolexicon), as addressed in the discussion. In conclusion, a “post-lexical access” deficit is rather suggested, that is prior to morphophonological encoding, and affects abstract morphosyntactic operations required to implement the verb argument structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within single-mechanism connectionist models of inflectional morphology, generating the past-tense form of a verb depends upon the interaction of semantic and phonological representations, with semantic information being particularly important for irregular or exception verbs. We assessed this hypothesis in two experiments requiring normal speakers to produce the past tense from a verb stem that takes a regular or exceptional past tense. Experiment 1 revealed significant latency advantages for high- over low-imageability words for both regular verbs (e.g., "lunged" faster than "loved") and exception items (e.g., "drank" faster than "dealt"); but critically, this effect was significantly larger for exceptions than for regulars. Experiment 2 employed a semantic priming paradigm where participants inflected verb stems (e.g., sit) preceded by related (e.g., chair) or unrelated primes (e.g., jug) and revealed a priming effect in accuracy that was confined to the exception items. Our results are consistent with predictions from single-mechanism connectionist models of inflectional morphology and converge with findings from neurological patients and studies of reading aloud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iquito, a Zaparoan language of Peruvian Amazonia, marks a binary distinction between realis and irrealis clauses solely by means of a word order alternation. Realis clauses exhibit a construction in which no element intervenes between the subject and verb, while in irrealis clauses a phrasal constituent appears between the subject and verb. No free or bound morphology otherwise indicates whether an Iquito clause is realis or irrealis. Based on these facts and partially similar phenomena in other languages, this article argues that typologies of inflectional exponence should be expanded to include word order as an inflectional formative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the storage versus composition of Spanish inflected verbal forms in first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of Spanish. L2 participants were selected to have mid-to-advanced proficiency, high classroom experience, and low immersion experience, typical of medium-to-advanced foreign language learners. Participants were shown the infinitival forms of verbs from either Class I (the default class, which takes new verbs) or Classes II and III (nondefault classes) and were asked to produce either first-person singular present tense or imperfect forms, in separate tasks. In the present tense, the L1 speakers showed inflected-form frequency effects (i.e., higher frequency forms were produced faster, which is taken as a reflection of storage) for stem-changing (irregular) verb forms from both Class I (e.g., pensar-pienso) and Classes II and III (e.g., perder-pierdo), as well as for non-stem-changing (regular) forms in Classes II/III (e.g., vender-vendo), in which the regular transformation does not appear to constitute a default. In contrast, Class I regulars (e.g., pescar-pesco), whose non-stem-changing transformation constitutes a default (e.g., it is applied to new verbs), showed no frequency effects. L2 speakers showed frequency effects for all four conditions (Classes I and II/III, regulars and irregulars). In the imperfect tense, the L1 speakers showed frequency effects for Class II/III (- ía-suffixed) but not Class I (- aba-suffixed) forms, even though both involve non-stem-change (regular) default transformations. The L2 speakers showed frequency effects for both types of forms. The pattern of results was not explained by a wide range of potentially confounding experimental and statistical factors and does not appear to be compatible with single-mechanism models, which argue that all linguistic forms are learned and processed in associative memory. The findings are consistent with a dual-system view in which both verb class and regularity influence the storage versus composition of inflected forms. Specifically, the data suggest that in L1, inflected verbal forms are stored (as evidenced by frequency effects) unless they are both from Class I and undergo non-stem-changing default transformations. In contrast, the findings suggest that at least these L2 participants may store all inflected verb forms. Taken together, the results support dual-system models of L1 and L2 processing in which, at least at mid-to-advanced L2 proficiency and lower levels of immersion experience, the processing of rule-governed forms may depend not on L1 combinatorial processes, but instead on memorized representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

in this paper I detail relationships between verb stems and the conjugation classes to which they belong in Yurok, an Algic language of northwest California. Yurok has four major conjugation classes, with one class, the oo-class, containing three subclasses defined by distinct third-person singular forms. I describe two regularities which have not been noted before. First, within the oo-class, distinct subclasses differing in third singular inflection are associated with distinctions in argument structure. Second, in one intransitive subclass of oo-class verbs, third-person singular inflections have the form and meaning of two Ritwan locative markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verb inflection errors, often seen in agrammatic aphasic speech, have been attributed to either impaired encoding of diacritical features that specify tense and aspect, or to impaired affixation during phonological encoding. In this study we examined the effect of semantic markedness, word form frequency and affix frequency, as well as accuracy and error patterns, in an attempt to evaluate whether diacritical or affixation operations are impaired. Verb inflections (V+ing, V+ed, V+s, and V stem in present progressive, past, present 3rd person singular, and future tense contexts, respectively) were elicited in eight mild-moderate agrammatic aphasic individuals in a sentence context using a picture description task. Results revealed that the majority of verbs produced were affixed (75%) although accuracy was low (36%). Word form frequency was found to be a significant predictor of the accuracy with which verb inflections were produced; while affix frequency and semantic markedness were not found to influence accuracy. These results suggest that a diacritical deficit is more likely to undermine the production of verb inflections than a affixation deficit, and indicate that when diacritical processes are compromised, word form frequency is likely to influence production of verb inflections in agrammatic aphasia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Dissociations in the recognition of specific classes of words have been documented in brain-injured populations. These include deficits in the recognition and production of morphologically complex words as well as impairments specific to particular syntactic classes such as verbs. However, functional imaging evidence for distinctions among the neural systems underlying these dissociations has been inconclusive. We explored the neural systems involved in processing different word classes in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, contrasting four groups of words co-varying morphological complexity (simple, monomorphemic words vs complex derived or inflected words) and syntactic class (verbs vs nouns/adjectives). Subtraction of word from letter string processing showed activation in left frontal and temporal lobe regions consistent with prior studies of visual word processing. No differences were observed for morphologically complex and simple words, despite adequate power to detect stimulus specific effects. A region of posterior left middle temporal gyrus showed significantly increased activation for verbs. Post hoc analyses showed that this elevated activation could also be related to semantic properties of the stimulus items (verbs have stronger action associations than nouns, and action association is correlated with activation). Results suggest that semantic as well as syntactic factors should be considered when assessing the neural systems involved in single word comprehension. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Dissociations of nouns and verbs following brain damage have been interpreted as evidence for distinct neural substrates underlying different aspects of the language system. Some neuroimaging studies have supported this claim by finding neural differentiation for nouns and verbs [Brain 122 (1999) 2337] while others have argued against neural specialisation [Brain 119 (1996) 159; Brain 124 (2001) 1619]. We suggest that one reason why these inconsistencies may have arisen is because the morphological structure of nouns and verbs has been ignored. In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we test the hypothesis that the neural processing of nouns and verbs differs when they are inflected. We contrasted the processing of regularly inflected nouns (dogs) with regularly inflected verbs (hitting), and found that the LIFG was more strongly activated in processing regularly inflected verbs compared to regularly inflected nouns. Moreover, regions of LIFG that were more active in the fMRI study for inflected verbs partially overlapped with the lesions in patients who have particular problems with verb morphology. Taken together with previous studies, these results suggest that noun and verb stems do not differ in terms of their representation, but when verbs are morphologically complex they differentially engage those neural systems which are involved in processes of morpho-phonology and syntax. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigates the differences in the input representations of verbs and nouns in the Italian mental lexicon. One visual lexical decision experiment in which the stem homograph effect (Laudanna, Badecker, & Caramazza, 1989) was evaluated on noun and verb targets is reported. Strong inhibitory effects on verb targets preceded by stem homographs relative to nonhomographic word pairs were found. The effects on verb targets were also much more reliable than the effects on noun targets. The pattern of results provides support for the hypothesis that noun and verbs are differently represented in the orthographic input lexicon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]