Distributional Restrictions on Co-Occurrence of Aspect and Focus Morphemes in Ata Verbs

Abstract

O. Introduction. In the Ata dialect1 of Manobo, there are restrictions on the co-occurrence of verbal affixes indicating aspect and variants of other verbal affixes which mark focus. 2 These restrictions result in independent and dependent verbs, and cannot be described adequately without reference to the distribution of such verbs in higher levels of the grammar. A dependent verb can occur only (1) as the modified head of a verb phrase or (2) as the predicate nucleus of a dependent clause. An independent verb can occur as the only obligatory element in an independent verbal predication. Some independent verbs can also occur either modified or as heads of dependent clauses. There are four kinds of dependent verbs. The inflection of these is shown in those cells of matrices3