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Nebraska
Press Series 1
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The Semantics of Time
Aspectual Categorization in Koyukon Athabaskan
Melissa Axelrod, Cloth: 1993,
xii, 200, CIP.LC 92-42719,0-8032-1032-9
Studies in the Anthropology
of North American Indians Series
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The languages of the Athabascan family
are noted for their rich aspectual systems—inventories
of grammatical forms that denote the nature of the action
of a verb in relation to its beginning, duration, completion,
or repetition, but without reference to its position
in time. Koyukon is an Athabaskan language spoken along
the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers in Alaska. Among Athabaskan
languages, Koyukon has the most elaborate and profusely
varied possibilities of morphologically marked derivational
aspect.
This work comprises three parts. The
first describes the aspectual system, which sorts out
a complex network of four modes, fifteen aspects, four
superaspects, and some three hundred aspect-dependent
derivation prefix strings. The second analyzes the organization
of verb theme categories, which are directly linked
to aspectual categories. The last assesses the function
of the aspectual system as a whole.
MELISSA AXELROD received a Ph.D. in
linguistics from the University of Colorado in lggo.
She has worked for the Alaska Native Language Center,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and currently teaches
in the English Department at California State University,
San Bernardino.
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