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This chapter discusses some morphological idiosyncrasies that involve the four Bantu verbal suffixes. The terms passivization and applicativization are used in the chapter to refer to abstract morphological processes that can be applied to basic verb roots. These can create derived verb stems that show the syntax and semantics that are associated with those terms. Background information on the Bantu verb stem is provided in the second section, while the third section features a simpler morphological irregularity found in the verb stem. The chapter also discusses morphological mismatches in the verb stem and various classes of deponent verb stems.

This chapter considers how children acquire the intransitive verb complex in K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol. The intransitive verb complex has four parts: the tense/aspect marker, the subject marker, the status suffix, and the verb root. The first three are interdependent and together indicate transitivity and mood. The Mayan intransitive verb complex is polysynthetic in the sense that it denotes a complete proposition by itself. The verb forms in the indicative and nominalized moods are the most similar across the three languages, except that Mam lacks the status suffixes seen on the Ch'ol and K'iche' verbs. The chapter discusses the Mayan children's production of the intransitive verb complexes in three moods (indicative, imperative, nominalized) in K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol. It uses the comparative method to examine how certain pan-Mayan generalizations affect children's language acquisition with respect to K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol.

This chapter shows how children acquire the transitive verb complex in K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol. The structure of the transitive verb complex differs significantly from that of the intransitive verb complex. The transitive verb complex has five parts: the aspect prefix, the subject marker, the verb root, the object marker, and the status suffix. The subject marker and status suffix differ from those in the intransitive verb complex. The aspect marker, subject marker, and status suffix are interdependent and together denote mood. In all three Mayan languages, the transitive verb complexes are more distinct than their intransitive counterparts. The chapter discusses the Mayan children's production of the transitive verb complexes in three moods (indicative, imperative, nominalized) in each of the three languages. It uses the comparative method to examine how certain pan-Mayan generalizations affect children's language acquisition with respect to K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol.

Research on partial reduplication has primarily focused on developing a theory that takes into account all of the factors which speakers may invoke in trying to determine how a reduplicant will relate to its base. There have been attempts to characterize the reduplicant in prosodic terms and the role of morphological structure in determining the link between base and reduplicant. This chapter examines verb-stem reduplication in Ndebele, a Southern Bantu language spoken by the Nguni group, and shows how the reduplicant in Ndebele is conditioned by phonological and morphological factors that are “abstract” in nature. It argues that the reduplicant of an Ndebele verb stem must be analyzed as a verb stem itself and explains how its surface form is derived by direct spell-out of its own (identical) morphosyntactic structure, which, in turn, is a direct copy from the base. The chapter also discusses complications arising in the reduplication of stems containing subminimal or “consonantal” verb roots, along with fusion or “imbrication” of perfective -ile, the passive suffix -w-, and palatalization.

This chapter discusses the nature of Akabea roots and of stem-forming processes involving derivational affixes. Special attention is paid to the rich system of somatic (body-part) prefixes, to multicategorial stems, and to the typologically highly unusual phenomenon of Verb Root Ellipsis.

How much of variations in verbal meaning, aspectual (Aktionsart) interpretation, and thematic information are actually contributed by the syntactic structure itself? And if all this information can be derived in the syntax, what is the role of the lexical representation of the verb? The editors' aim in this volume is the construction of a theory of the lexicon–syntax connection that will address these questions. Approaches to this issue can be roughly divided into two: the ‘lexicon-driven’ and the ‘syntax-driven’. In the former, all of a verb's meanings are listed in the lexicon, from which the various syntactic frames are projected. Differences in both structure and interpretation are attributed to differences in meaning, or lexical representation, of a verb or verbs. In the latter, the syntax-driven approach, much of a verb's meaning is derived from the syntactic structure in which it is projected. Differences in interpretation, whether related to aspectual classification or to argument number and type, are attributable to differences in the structural representation itself. The editors' conclusion is that this structure, whether lexical or syntactic, whether projected by the verb root or by functional or overt morphology, can indeed yield all and more of the information which was once considered to be in the domain of the lexicon. And yet the lexicon's role is still seen to be crucial: the determination of the lexical entry that will account for (in)compatibility with syntactic structure is a vital part of any research into the syntax of aspect.