Word classes

Abstract

This chapter is a survey of word classes in indigenous North American languages, with the aim of providing an introduction to the study of parts of speech, and of highlighting the unique place and contribution of North American indigenous languages in this research. Section 2 defines lexical vs. grammatical and open vs. closed classes, and how these distinctions are realized in North American languages. Section 3 summarizes the prominent themes in word classes research in North America: 1) at what level a word is categorized (root, stem, or inflected word), 2) whether a given language distinguishes noun and verb, and 3) whether a given language has an adjective category. The chapter concludes that North American languages present serious challenges to the definition and status of word classes in linguistic theory, and that the development of distinct lexical categories in a language is not necessarily a given.

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https://doi.org/./-
Daniel W. Hieber
9 Word classes
Abstract: This chapter is an introduction to word classes (parts of speech) in indige-
nous North American languages. It explains theoretical approaches to the study of word
classes (language-particular vs. typological) as well as how word classes are classified
(lexical vs. functional classes and open vs. closed classes). The core of the chapter is a
survey of the word classes commonly found in North American languages. It covers the
lexical categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, and the functional categories
of adposition, article, auxiliary, particle, and pronoun. There are however many out-
standing questions in word-class research. Two of the most prominent ones– locus of
categoriality and the noun-verb distinction– are discussed in detail in the latter half
of this chapter. The diversity of North American languages continues to challenge our
understanding of the nature of word classes.
9.1 Introduction
Word classes (traditionally called parts of speech) are groups of words in a language
that fill similar slots in an utterance (Croft : ) and share some linguistic prop-
erties, whether those properties are semantic, syntactic, or morphological (Anward,
Moravcsik, and Stassen : –; Anward : ; Rijkhoff : ; Schachter
and Shopen : –; van der Auwera and Gast : ). For example, the class of
words that can fill the slot in the utterance the big _____ are typically called “nouns” in
English. Noun, verb, and adjective are the best-known classes, but linguists argue for
the existence of many others. Languages vary in the number of word classes they have,
the characteristics that define those classes, and the number of words that fall into each
class (Schachter and Shopen : ; Velupillai : ; Smith ).
Native North American languages have a unique part to play in research on word
classes. These languages challenge traditional conceptions of word classes because they
do not cleanly map onto the categories of Greek and Latin, which were thought to be
universal (Anward, Moravcsik, and Stassen : ; Vogel and Comrie : xiii). As
a result, early Americanist linguists sought to analyze languages on language-internal
1This definition is intentionally broad, because linguists disagree– often fundamentally – on what
word classes are, and how to define them in particular languages (see §). Bernard Comrie (p.c.) points
out that the present definition could include inflectional classes or valence classes, which are not tradi-
tionally considered distinct parts of speech. The tradition in linguistics is that the term word class refers
to categories like noun, verb, pronoun, etc. (Haspelmath : ). However, some linguists, particu-
larly those that adopt the perspective of construction grammar (see especially Croft ), happily accept
different inflectional classes or valence classes as types of word classes. See § for more detail.

190 Daniel W. Hieber
evidence alone, rather than impose grammatical models from other languages and tra-
ditions (Sapir : ). The subsequent quest to accurately describe Native American
languages on their own terms motivated– and continues to motivate– a large portion
of the research into the nature of linguistic categories.
An understanding of word classes is useful to speakers and language learners
because knowing the category of a word provides speakers with information about how
that word is used. The part of speech of a word can indicate which affixes that word
is allowed to take, how that word combines with other words or affixes to create new
words, and what roles that word can play in a sentence, among other information.
This chapter has two primary goals:
) to introduce the study of word classes with a focus on current approaches
) to highlight the unique place and contribution of native North American languages
in this research
Section presents two competing theories of word classes. Section explains the main
types of word classes: lexical vs. functional and open vs. closed. Section is a brief survey
of some common word classes. Section summarizes two central issues in word class
research in North American languages specifically. Section concludes by summarizing
the distinct contribution of North American languages to the study of word classes.
9.2 Theories of word classes
Today, there are two diametrically opposed perspectives on the nature of word classes
(Croft : ). The first, more traditional approach, argues that individual languages
have large, cohesive word classes such as noun, verb, and adjective, but that these cate-
gories vary considerably across languages, with perhaps some languages lacking certain
categories entirely. Researchers that adopt this perspective differ as to whether they
view word classes as clearly defined or fuzzy and prototypical, but they agree that it is
possible to define and describe major categories for every language. This is the particu-
larist (that is, language-particular) approach to word classes.
The second approach argues that the behaviors of individual words in a language
are so diverse that it is impossible to formulate broad definitions for word classes. In
this approach, languages do not have major word classes like noun, verb, and adjective.
Instead they have a proliferation of tiny categories or constructions. The major word
classes are emergent and epiphenomenal (Croft : ; Croft : ), arising from
the human propensity to view the world through the cognitive prototypes of objects,
actions, and properties, and the fact that discourse is fundamentally a sequence of ref-
erents and predicates (Sapir : ; Croft : ). This cognitive propensity is
reflected in various subtle ways in the grammars of all languages. This is the typological
(that is, crosslinguistic), constructional, or functional prototype approach to word classes
(Croft : –).

Word classes 191
It is impossible to discuss word classes without at least implicitly committing to
one of these two perspectives. Nearly all the studies referenced in this chapter adopt
the particularist approach to word classes. The typological approach to word classes
is still fairly recent, and little research has looked at North American languages from a
constructional perspective (though see Hieber [] and Vigus []). However, since
this chapter is a crosslinguistic survey, I adopt the typological approach here. When I use
terms like noun or verb in describing a language, I am referring to crosslinguistic proto-
types or comparative concepts (Haspelmath ), rather than making a claim about the
existence or nonexistence of that particular part of speech in that particular language.
9.3 Types of word classes
Word classes are typically described along two dimensions: they may contain lexical
(“content”) words or grammatical (“function”) words, and they may be open to new
members or closed to new members. This section describes each of these types.
9.3.1 Content words vs. function words
One way to describe word classes is in terms of the meanings of their words, dividing
them into lexical categories or functional categories (Haspelmath ; Rijkhoff ).
Lexical categories contain “content words” which prototypically refer to things, events,
or properties in the world. Below are some lexical words in Arapaho (Algonquian).
Section§. discusses lexical categories in more depth.
() Arapaho (Algonquian) (Cowell and Moss : , , –)
hébes ‘beaver’
hébesii ‘beavers’
wóxhoox ‘horse’
woxhóóxebii ‘horses’
ho’óeet ‘clay’
ho’óeetno ‘(clay-based) ceremonial paints’
bes ‘wood’
béxo ‘sticks’
biixúút ‘shirt’
nebiixúút ‘my shirt’
nííhooyóúʼu ‘they (inanimate) are yellow’
nííhoonéíh(i)t ‘s/he (animate) is yellow)
nonóóhowó’ ‘I see him/her’
neihoownoohówoo ‘I don’t see him/her’

192 Daniel W. Hieber
In contrast, functional categories contain words which indicate grammatical relation-
ships or specify features about content words. These are called “function words”, and they
typically have abstract meanings. Below are some function words in Creek (Muskogean).
() Creek (Muskogean) (Martin : , –, –, –)
leyk- auxiliary verb, ‘be (while sitting)’
hoyɬ- auxiliary verb, ‘be (while standing)’
wa:kk- auxiliary verb, ‘be (while lying)’
=ta:t(i) focus of attention
=a:t(i) referential (definite/emphatic)
The first three words in () are auxiliary verbs– words which provide additional infor-
mation about a main verb (see §..). In Creek, auxiliary verbs express aspect, pos-
sibility, or strength of assertion (Martin : ). The last two words in the () are
enclitics– morphemes which behave phonologically like suffixes, but syntactically like
independent words, with scope over the entire phrase. While =ta:t(i) attaches to noun
phrases and indicates that the noun is the focus of attention or topic of the discourse,
=a:t(i) attaches to verb phrases to indicate definiteness or identifiability (Martin :
, ). North American languages have a great diversity of functional categories like
these. Section§. describes several common ones in more detail.
The terms “lexical category” and “functional category” are not used the same way
by all researchers. Both “lexical category” and “functional category” are sometimes used
to refer to word classes as defined here (e.g., Payne : ). Sometimes “word class”
is used to refer to lexical categories (Rijkhoff : ). It is also common to use the
term grammatical categories for word classes, although this term more typically refers
to formally marked features of a word such as person, tense, or number (Crystal :
–; –; Trask : ). Another related term is syntactic categories; this is
sometimes used in the equivalent sense of lexical categories, sometimes in the broader
sense of word classes (see Rauh [] for an extended discussion). It is helpful to be
aware of these terminological differences when reading linguistic research.
The distinction between lexical and functional categories is not always a clear one.
Adpositions (prepositions and postpositions) often have both lexical and functional uses
(Haspelmath : ; Smith : ). Consider the two uses of the word by in
English in ().
() English (Indo-European) (Corpus of Contemporary American English; Davies )
 a. Remember the last time you passed by your favorite park
 b. If your life was destroyed by the money that paid for this thing
In example (a), by is lexical, meaning ‘next to’ or ‘in proximity to’. In (b), by is functional,
marking the agent of a passive clause. Adpositions in Chitimacha (isolate) also have both
lexical and functional uses. In (), the postposition hix may mean ‘with; by means of’ (its
lexical sense, in (a)) or mark the agent of a transitive verb (its functional sense, in (b)).

Word classes 193
() Chitimacha (isolate) (Swadesh a: Ac.)
 a. hus mahci kuh hix qapx nehpapuyna
  hus mahci kuh hix qapx neh-pa-puy-na
   tail feather with  cover---.
  ‘they adorn themselves with his tail feathers’ (Swadesh a: Ak.)
 b. qix hix hi koomicukix
  qix hix hi kow-ma-cu(y)-ki-x
     call- --.-
  ‘if I call them’
The reason for this gradation between lexical and functional uses of the same word is
that function words derive historically from lexical words, a process known as gram-
maticalization (Hopper and Traugott ). A language will often retain the older, lexical
meaning alongside the newer, functional meaning.
Another example of the cline between lexical and functional uses of a word is the
use of words meaning ‘sit’, ‘stand’, and ‘lie’ as auxiliary verbs indicating progressive
or continuative aspect in Siouan (Mithun : –), some Muskogean languages
(Munro ; Broadwell : –), and Chitimacha (Hieber : –), among
others. Example () shows lexical and functional uses of ‘sit’, ‘stand’, and ‘lie’ in Mandan
(Siouan).
() Mandan (Siouan) (Kennard
: )
 a. wɛrɛx nakóc
wɛrɛx nak-oc
  pot sit-
  ‘A pot was there (sitting).’
 b. mah ísɛkanakeròmakoc
  ‘he was (sitting) making an arrow’
 c. múixtɛna tɛromakoc
  múi-xtɛ-na tɛ-romakoc
  village-big- stand-.
  ‘there was a big village’
 d. ptáhakekaʼ
  ‘he was running around (upright)’
 e. máːta makómakoc
máːta mak-omakoc
  river lie-.
  ‘the river was there’
 f. miníxamakɛkaʼ
  ‘he was playing (prone)’

194 Daniel W. Hieber
9.3.2 Open classes vs. closed classes
Another way to describe word classes is by how open they are to new members. Open
classes are typically large and have new words added to them frequently, whereas
closed classes are typically small, limited to a fixed set of words, and add new members
only slowly and infrequently (often through grammaticalization) (Robins : –;
Schachter and Shopen : ; Velupillai : ). English articles, for example, are
a closed class of just two words (the and a/an), while English nouns are in principle
unlimited, with more words added all the time. There is gradation here as well: English
prepositions are generally considered a closed class even though they constitute a large
group of words (greater than  members), because new prepositions are not created
easily. Nonetheless, new prepositions do occasionally arise. For example, prepositional
uses of the word absent (as in the utterance absent those ropes, we’d float to a new and
faraway place [COCA]) arose only in the s (Harper ).
In North American languages, one somewhat common closed class of words is the
preverb category, words which form a semantic unit with their verb, and often indicate
things like direction or aspect (Los et al. : Ch. ). Chitimacha has a closed set of 
preverbs, shown below in () (Hieber ). By contrast, Menominee (Algic) has a large
open class of preverbs (Bloomfield : ).
() Chitimacha (isolate) (Hieber : )
hi ‘to, there’
his ‘back to, back there’
kap ‘up, beginning, becoming’
kaabs ‘back up’
ka ‘across’
kas ‘back across, apart, reverse’
ni ‘down’, 
qap ‘here, coming’
qapx ‘back here, coming back’, , 
While open classes tend to be lexical ones and closed classes tend to be functional ones,
this is just a tendency (Velupillai : ). Some Australian languages (Dixon :
–; Dixon : –) and Papuan languages (Foley : –) have small,
closed classes of verbs (Anward : ). However, I know of no North American lan-
guage which has a closed class of verbs like this. Closed adjective classes are likewise less
common in North America. In a balanced sample of  languages in Mexico and north-
2In some language families, the term preverb is used for certain types of verbal prefixes with lexical
meanings, rather than for syntactically distinct words. This is the case in many Dene languages, for
example (Rice & de Reuse : Sec. ..). Interestingly, the functions and meanings of these affixal
preverbs are similar to those of syntactically free preverb classes in other languages, suggesting that
preverb are a coherent typological class whose boundedness is a cline.

Word classes 195
ward, Velupillai (: –) finds that  have a closed adjective class. Velupillai ana-
lyzes most languages in the sample as lacking an adjective class entirely ( languages),
and the few languages with an open adjective class are constrained to Mesoamerica (
languages). Cupeño (Uto-Aztecan) has fewer than  adjectives (though Hill [: ]
notes that “the classes of adjectives and adverbs are not closed by structural principle
but simply have relatively few members”). In Wichita (Caddoan), property concepts are
expressed through verbs; however, a handful of words behave like inflected noun stems
rather than inflected verb stems. The only words in this category are Riwa·c ‘big’, Rikic
‘little’, riya·s ‘old’, and colors such as khac ‘white’ and kʷah·c ‘red’ (Rood : –).
9.4 Word classes in North American languages
This section describes the major lexical categories (§.) and a sample of functional
categories (§.) in North American languages from a crosslinguistic perspective, in
keeping with the functional-typological approach presented in §.
9.4.1 Lexical classes
The four most widely-discussed lexical classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
This section briefly defines each in turn.
9.4.1.1 Nouns
Nouns are words whose prototypical function is to refer to things (Croft : –;
: , ). The best exemplars are “time-stable” entities such as people, places, and
things (Givón : ), but nouns frequently refer to non-prototypical concepts as well,
such as abstract ideas and feelings. Distributionally, the prototypical function of nouns is
to serve as a participant in a clause, or as the head of a noun phrase that does so.
Typologically, nouns regularly have special forms or markers for the grammatical
categories of number, possession, definiteness/specificity, noun class (“gender”), or case/
grammatical relations (Croft : ; Haspelmath : ; Dixon : –; Velu-
pillai : ). However, every one of these features may be marked on verbs as well,
meaning that the presence of these grammatical categories is not a failproof diagnostic
for distinguishing nouns from verbs. I demonstrate a few such cross-cutting examples
in the remainder of this section.
N: On nouns, number marking indicates plurality of the referent; analo-
gously, some languages have a kind of number marking on verbs called pluractionality
(also event number or verbal number). Pluractionality indicates that the event happened

196 Daniel W. Hieber
multiple times, or that the action was distributed among multiple participants (Mithun
: –; Mattiola ). Most North American languages surveyed by Mattiola
() have pluractional morphology.
P: While many languages indicate a possessive relationship between two
nouns by marking either the possessor noun or the possessed noun, Nuuchahnulth
(a.k.a. Nootka; Wakashan) also allows possessive marking on verbs. When the posses-
sive suffix -ʔa·k appears on nouns, it indicates that the noun is possessed by the subject
of the clause. When the suffix appears on verbs, it indicates that the subject of the verb
is the possessor of the noun phrase. The two examples in () illustrate this contrast.
Possession is not an exclusively nominal category.
() Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) (Nakayama : )
 a. ʔaapiiʔiš ɬuucmaakqs
  ʔaːp-i·-ʔi·š ɬuːcma-ʔa·k-qs
  kind--. wife--.
  ‘My wife is kind.’
 b. ʔaapiiʔaks ɬuucma
  ʔaːp-i·-ʔa·k-s luːcma
  kind--- wife
  ‘My wife is kind.’
D: Verbs may have special morphology indicating that the speaker is refer-
ring to a definite (identifiable) action, or a definite/indefinite participant involved in
the action. Chitimacha, for example, has a preverb ni which marks the verb as definite.
The verb gast- ‘plant’ is transitive, usually taking an object, but with the preverb ni it
becomes intransitive and means ‘plant it’, indicating that there is some definite thing
being planted, whose identity can be understood from context. Definiteness is therefore
also not criterial of a noun category.
N C: Nouns in many languages take affixes that signify some inherent prop-
erty about the item, such as its animacy, spatial orientation, or shape (Mithun :
–), separating nouns into classes. For example, the Iroquoian and Algonquian lan-
guages make a morphological distinction between animate and inanimate nouns, with
different affixes for each. In Yurok (Algic), however, adjectives also make this distinction
(see §..; Robins : –). Dene languages have an entire set of classificatory
verbs whose stems change based on the countability, number, animacy, and shape/con-
sistency of their absolutive argument (Jaker, Welch, and Rice : ). Classification is
therefore not a category unique to nouns.

Word classes 197
9.4.1.2 Verbs
Verbs are words whose prototypical function is to predicate– that is, to state something
about a referent (Searle : –; Croft : –; Croft : , ). The best
exemplars of verbs are actions, events, and processes (Givón []: ), but verbs
frequently convey static meanings as well, such as location or knowledge. Distribution-
ally, the prototypical function of verbs is to serve as the head of a clause.
Typologically, it is common for verbs to mark the grammatical categories of tense,
aspect, mood, polarity (negative/positive), evidentiality (source of knowledge), epistemic
modality (attitude towards the statement), event number, verb class, or grammatical
relations (information about the participants in the clause and their relations to one
another) (Croft : ; Haspelmath : ; Dixon : –). In §.., I noted
that nouns also indicate grammatical relations; it is quite common for North American
languages to indicate grammatical relations on both nouns and verbs. An important
difference is that markers of grammatical relations on nouns indicate their own role
in the clause, while markers of grammatical relations on verbs indicate the role of its
arguments in the clause.
The grammatical categories most commonly associated with verbs may be found on
other categories as well. Since the noun-verb distinction is treated at length in §., I will
mention just two cross-cutting cases here: Although tense is the most canonical gram-
matical category associated with verbs, Makah (Wakashan) nouns may also appear with
tense markers. Compare the predicative and referential uses of the tense marker in ().
() Makah (Wakashan) (Jacobsen : )
 a. baʔasʔu
  house--.
  ‘It was a house.’
 b. baʔasʔuq
  house--
  ‘the former house’
Similarly, although aspect is also canonically associated with verbs, Nuuchahnulth (also
Wakashan) allows aspect markers on nouns:
() Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) (Nakayama : )
 a. aauupačak
aːuːp-(y)a-čak
  instructing--instrument
  ‘This is a teaching.’
 b. aaw
iɬaƛ
aƛ qaama
  aːw
iɬaƛ-ʼaƛ qaama
  young.man- name
  ‘Qaahma was a young man.’

198 Daniel W. Hieber
When nouns are used in this non-prototypical way, they are inherently durative,
and may only form existential, classifying, or identifying expressions (Nakayama
: ).
9.4.1.3 Adjectives
Adjectives are words whose prototypical function is to modify– that is, to specify addi-
tional features, qualities, or attributes of a referent (Searle : –; Croft :
–; Croft : , ; Schachter and Shopen : ). Adjectives always modify
nouns; words which modify other kinds of items are classified as adverbs (see §..).
The best exemplars of adjectives are words which attribute properties having to do
with value, dimension, age, speed, physical property, and color (Dixon ), but adjec-
tives may convey a vast diversity of concepts depending on the language. Adjectives
may have distinct forms for comparatives (taller), superlatives (tallest), and equatives
(as tall as).
Adjectives are not the only way that languages can convey information about attrib-
utes and properties. They may have verbs meaning ‘have quality X’, or nouns meaning
‘thing with quality X’. Consequently, adjectives crosslinguistically tend to associate with
either nouns or verbs (Croft : ; Wetzer : ; Croft : ). This is especially
true for North American languages– there are few if any morphosyntactic devices ded-
icated to modification. However, words for property concepts usually exhibit behaviors
which are different from other words in their class, often justifying the recognition of a
subclass of verbs or nouns.
There are North American languages with a large, open class of adjectives such as
Chitimacha (see discussion in §.) or Central Pomo (Pomoan) (Mithun : ), but
this is rare. Slightly more common are languages with a small, closed class of adjectives.
In a sample including  North American languages, Velupillai (Velupillai : )
finds only  of those languages have a distinct but closed class of adjectives. Southern
Paiute (Uto-Aztecan) has only about a dozen adjectives, for the concepts , ,
, , , , , , , , and  (Sapir : –). We
have already seen the small class of adjectives in Wichita (Rood : –). Tłıcho
Yatıì (a.k.a. Dogrib, Na-Dene) likewise has a closed set of  adjectives which are distin-
guished by their lack of inflectional morphology (Welch ).
Most North American languages arguably lack an adjective class, such that prop-
erty concepts are a subcategory of noun or verb or divided between both. Only a few
North American languages encode property concepts as nouns; most languages code
property concepts as a subclass of verbs. Rincón Luiseño (Uto-Aztecan) is one language
which codes some property concepts like nouns. While most modifiers in Luiseño are
derived from verbs, the most prototypical property concepts take noun endings, e.g.,
yoot ‘large’ and kiháat ‘small’ (Kroeber and Grace : ). The following examples
illustrate the morphological similarity between nouns and adjectives. (Note that the

Word classes 199
“absolutive” suffix in these examples has various realizations– here -ch, -l, or -sh– and
that the plural of ‘girl’ is irregular/suppletive.)
() Rincón Luiseño (Uto-Aztecan) (Elliott : –)
 a. nawítma-l yawáywi-sh
  girl- pretty-
  ‘pretty girl’
 b. nánatma-l-um yawáywi-ch-um
  girl-- pretty--
  ‘pretty girls’
 c. Yaʼá-sh tóow-q nawítma-l-i yawáywi-ch-i.
  man- see-. girl-- pretty--
  ‘The man sees a pretty girl.’
 d. péshli-chal yawáywi-chal
  dish- pretty-
  ‘with the pretty dish’
The Maidu (Maidun) and Cherokee (Iroquoian) languages are like the Chitimacha lan-
guage mentioned above in that they contain an open class of adjectives, all of which are
formed from verbs (Dixon [: –] for Maidu; Lindsey and Scancarelli [],
Chafe [], and Barrie and Uchihara [] for Cherokee). Unlike Chitimacha, however,
these languages use nominal rather than adjectival affixes for modifiers. Adjectives in
these languages are therefore a subclass of nouns which are all derived from verbs.
By far the most common way to encode property concepts in North American lan-
guages is as a subclass of verbs. The following examples illustrate the use of such prop-
erty concepts in a selection of languages, comparing them to action verbs in the same
language.
() Navajo (Na-Dene) (Young and Morgan : , )
 a. yi-sh-cha
  --cry
  ‘I am crying’
 b. ni-s-neez
  .--tall
  ‘I am tall’
3In the North American tradition, the term absolutive sometimes refers to the default or unmarked
form of a noun rather than the single argument of an intransitive verb (as most linguists use the term
today). Grammatical descriptions of Luiseño often use this former, more traditional sense of the term. I
retain that usage in the examples here.

200 Daniel W. Hieber
() Quileute (Chimakuan) (Andrade : , )
 a. čaːč-a-ø
  fly--
  ‘it is/was flying’
 b. tsiʔda-ʔa-ø
  handsome--
  ‘he is handsome’
() West Greenlandic (Eskaleut) (Fortescue : , )
 a. isir-puq ingil-luni-lu
  come_in-. sit_down-.-and
  ‘she came in and sat down’
 b. illu-at kusanar-puq
  house-. pretty-.
  ‘their house is pretty and warm’
Many North American languages make a distinction in their verbal person marking
between agents– the argument in the clause that performs, effects, instigates, or con-
trols the event– and patients– the argument in the clause which lacks one or more of
these properties. In languages with property verbs that exhibit agent-patient marking,
property verbs often use patient person markers, although this is just a typological
tendency. Examples include Alabama (Muskogean; Wetzer [: –]), Kiowa
(Kiowa-Tanoan; Wetzer [: ]), Lakota (Siouan; Pustet [: ]), and Mojave
(Yuman; Wetzer [: ]), among many others. Central Pomo is one North American
exception to this tendency: basic adjectives appear with agent markers unless they are
inchoative (‘becoming’) (Mithun : ).
As mentioned, property verbs often exhibit slightly different behavior from pro-
totypical event verbs within a language. The most common difference is that property
verbs are limited in the range of inflectional possibilities they can take (what Croft
[; ; ; ; ] calls their behavioral potential). They may be limited to
the stative or durative aspects, for example. Another common difference is that prop-
erty verbs may modify nouns directly, but event verbs require some type of additional
nominalizing or relativizing morphology to modify nouns. For instance, in a thorough
review of evidence for adjective classes in several Siouan languages, Helmbrecht (;
in progress) reports that in Hocank (a.k.a. Winnebago; Siouan) nouns may be modified
using relative clauses. Relative clauses in Hocank are structurally nearly identical to
noun phrases in the language. They typically require a determiner and person inflec-
tion, and they may take tense and aspect marking. However, when a property word is
used to modify a noun, it does not require a determiner, is never inflected for person,
and never takes tense or aspect marking.
In Choctaw (Muskogean), property words are morphological verbs, but there are
clear semantic regularities which set them apart from other verbs. In Muskogean lan-
guages, verb stems undergo certain phonological changes such as nasalization, h-inser-
tion, lengthening, etc. to indicate their aspect. These sets of phonological changes are

Word classes 201
called grades in the Muskogean literature. When applied to property words, however,
these grades have the semantic effect of intensifiers or comparatives rather than aspect
(Haag , ). Secondly, when these property words appear after nouns, they
optionally show nominal morphology, with a penultimate pitch accent and final glottal
stop (Broadwell : ).
In the case of Nuuchahnulth, Nakayama () argues that the adjective class is a
discourse tendency rather than a clearly-defined set of properties that pick out a mutu-
ally exclusive set of words. He reports that adjectivals are words which do not take
objects, and which may be combined with nominals to form a phrase (Nakayama :
). They may however sometimes also serve directly as arguments.
A more unusual pattern of behavioral differences for property concepts occurs in
Yurok, where numbers and about eleven adjectival roots vary the form of their stem
(that is, their stems are suppletive) based on the category of the noun they modify. The
categories include , ,  (non-tree), , , , and others.
Each adjective in Yurok potentially has a different form of the stem for each one of these
categories. Example () shows the different stems for ‘big’ and ‘small’.
() Yurok (Algic) (Robins : –)
 Category ‘big’ ‘small’
 human beings peloy cey(kel)
 animals and birds ply cyky
 round things ploy(keloy) ceykoh
 body parts, utensils, clothes plep cey(kel)
 stringlike things plep cey(kel)
 flat things ploks cey(kel)
 houses pleloy ceykoh
 boats pleyteloy cey(kel)
In other languages there seems to be no substantive behavioral differences between
property words and event verbs. In Seneca (Iroquoian), words expressing property
concepts do belong to a subclass of verbs that are limited to stative aspect, but there
are numerous other, non-property verbs which also belong to this class (Chafe ).
Example () lists representative sets of property words and event words in Seneca,
both of which are restricted to the stative aspect.
() Seneca (Iroquoian) (Chafe : –)
 a. osde’ ‘it’s heavy’
  otgi’ ‘it’s dirty’
  odö:sgwi:h ‘it’s wrinkled’
  o:ni:yöh ‘it’s hard, tough’
  ojiwagëh ‘it’s sour, bitter’
  hohsë:h ‘he’s fat’
  hodí’gyö’ ‘he’s shy’

202 Daniel W. Hieber
 b. otga:h ‘it’s making a noise’
  owe hde’ ‘it has something added to it’
  hotö:de’ ‘he hears it’
  hono hdö’ ‘he knows it’
  hóío’de’ ‘he’s working’
  hohse’ ‘he’s riding on its back’
  ho:wísdagá’de’ ‘he has a lot of money’
  ho’áshägéhde’ ‘he’s carrying a basket on his back’
Chafe () considers seven possible criteria that might identify a class of adjectives in
Seneca (and by extension all of Northern Iroquoian) and finds that all the criteria are
subject to the same problem in that they include non-property concepts as well.
Finally, some languages distribute property concepts across multiple word classes.
In Chinook (Chinookan), words expressing speed, color, and a few words for human
propensity are particles, while words expressing age are verbs, and words expressing
dimension, value, and other human propensity concepts are nouns (Dixon : –).
In sum, the encoding of property concepts in North American languages shows tre-
mendous diversity. Some languages have a large, open class of distinct adjectives, others
have a small closed class, but in most North American languages property words are a
subset of either nouns or verbs. And in a few cases, even the existence of such a subclass
is difficult to motivate.
9.4.1.4 Adverbs
Adverbs, like adjectives, are words whose prototypical function is modify; however, they
differ from adjectives in that adjectives only modify nouns, while adverbs may modify
essentially anything else (Haspelmath : ; Velupillai : ), including verbs
(run quickly), adjectives (quite happy), other adverbs (very quickly), prepositions (right
out), noun phrases (quite the party), entire utterances (unfortunately), but not individual
nouns (*dog quickly) (Velupillai : ). Semantically, adverbs prototypically convey
meanings such as manner (quickly), degree (extremely), time (now), location (there), or
evidential/epistemic attitude (probably, frankly) (Quirk et al. ; Velupillai : ).
Like adjectives, adverbs may have distinct forms for comparatives (faster), superlatives
(fastest), and equatives (as fast as).
Adverbial constructions are not strongly grammaticalized in North American lan-
guages. In a recent handbook of North American languages, discussions of adverbs
appear only sparingly, and the term “adverb” does even not appear in the index (Siddiqi
et al. ). Languages use a variety of other strategies for conveying prototypical
4This point is a comment on the structure of North American languages rather than a criticism of the
volume’s coverage.

Word classes 203
manner concepts instead. In Dëne Sųłıné (Na-Dene), locative nouns may function as
adverbs (Cook : ), and adverbs in most Dene languages are derived from relative
clauses (Jaker, Welch, and Rice : ). Chitimacha has a set of suffixes expressing
manner, including -di ‘doing horizontally’, -duwa ‘doing suddenly’, -kint ‘by pushing’,
and -ti ‘by handling’. In Nuuchahnulth adverbial concepts like ‘also’, ‘for two days’, and
‘still’ are encoded with intransitive predicates (Nakayama : –). Nuuchahnulth
also has a number of lexical suffixes expressing location, such as -ʽis ‘being on the beach’,
-ʼas ‘being on the ground’, -ʼa· ‘being on the rock’, or -ʽiɬ ‘being in the house’. Otherwise,
adverbial concepts are expressed through verb serialization. The examples below show
serial verbs expressing manner, time, and location, respectively.
() Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) (Nakayama : )
 a. ƛawaʔiiʔaƛquuč kʷaačiƛ
ƛawa-ʔiː-ʼaƛ-quː-č kʷaː-či(ƛ)
  near-reaching--.- move.backwards-
  he.would.go.near move.backwards
  ‘[While he was dancing] he would go near [him] moving backwards.’
 b. qiis waɬyuu
qiː-s waɬ-yu·
  for.long- go.home-done
  I.for.long at.home
  ‘For a long time I stayed at home.’
 c. yacaaqtuu ʔucačiƛ ʔuuƛ
aqči
yac-a·qtu· ʔu-ca-či(ƛ) ʔuuƛ
aqči
  step-going.over it-going.to- 
  walked.over.the.hill went.there Odlaqutla
  ‘They went over [the high land] to Odlaqutla.’
9.4.2 Functional classes
As mentioned in §., North American languages exhibit a large variety of function
words. This section covers just a few functional classes for which North American lan-
guages exhibit unique or interesting behaviors– adpositions, articles, auxiliaries, par-
ticles, and pronouns.
9.4.2.1 Adpositions
Adpositions are words that govern a noun phrase and signal a relationship between the
noun phrase and another word in the clause (Hagège : ; Kurzon and Adler :
). It can be difficult to distinguish adpositions from case markers since they both signal

204 Daniel W. Hieber
relationships between elements of a clause, and there is often a diachronic and syn-
chronic cline between them resulting from grammaticalization (Hagège : Sec..).
Adpositions may also be clitics (Hagège : ).
There are several types of adpositions: prepositions precede the noun phrase, post-
positions follow the noun phrase, and circumpositions consist of two elements, one
which precedes the noun phrase and one which follows it. Shoshone (Uto-Aztecan) has
another type called an inposition which occurs inside the noun phrase (Dryer c).
Many second-position clitics could also be considered a type of inposition.
Perhaps because North American languages signal many of the relationships among
participants using affixes (especially verbal affixes), adpositions are not a robust word
class in most North American language families. Even when present in a language, they
are sometimes a marginal class, only lightly grammaticalized. Creek (Muskogean), for
example, has just a small set of nouns such as naɬkapá ‘middle’ which have grammati-
calized into postpositions indicating location (Martin : –). Not all languages
have adpositions however (Croft : ). In Nuuchahnulth, relationships between
referents are always communicated by predicates, as shown below.
() Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) (Nakayama : )
šišaa ʔuuʔatup kʷakuucuk
šiš-(y)a· ʔu-ʽatup kʷakuːc-uk
 clean- it-doing.for grandchild-
 cleaning doing.for.them her.grandchildren
 ‘She would peel them for her grandchildren.’
9.4.2.2 Articles
As mentioned in §.., one of the categories that can be indicated on a noun is definite-
ness. One way languages do this is by using definite/indefinite articles (such as the, a/
an in English). Lakota has a set of two definite articles and three indefinite articles with
slightly different uses, exemplified in (). Articles in Lakota follow their noun phrase
rather than precede it.
() Lakota (Siouan) (Van Valin : )
 a. ki ‘the’ 
 b. kʔũ ‘the aforementioned’ 
 c. wã ‘a (specific)’ 
 d. wãi ‘one (nonspecific)’ 
 e. cha ‘a (contrastive)’ 
Quileute (Chimakuan) only has an indefinite article (Andrade : ). Chitimacha
uses a demonstrative adjective as a definite article, a common strategy in North America
(Dryer b).

Word classes 205
9.4.2.3 Auxiliaries
Auxiliary verbs are verbs which provide grammatical information about the main verb
they accompany (Velupillai : ). In example () from Southern Pomo (Pomoan),
the future tense marker appears on the auxiliary verb yo- rather than the predicate
kac:i ‘cold’.
() Southern Pomo (Pomoan) (Walker : )
kac:i yo-kʰ:e
 cold -
 ‘it will be cold’
While the grammatical features that auxiliary verbs carry typically include tense, aspect,
person, number, etc., a prevalent feature of North American languages is that auxiliary
verbs may also provide information regarding the spatial orientation of their subjects–
usually sitting, standing, or lying position. This is especially common in the Siouan lan-
guages (Mithun : –) and the languages of the U.S. Southeast (Campbell :
). See §. above for an illustration of positional auxiliary verbs in use in Siouan.
9.4.2.4 Particles
Language descriptions often include a word class called particles, but particles are not a
coherent typological class. The term “particle” is a morphological term, typically refer-
ring to words which are invariable and/or do not have inflectional morphology (Crystal
: ). However, the functions of uninflectable words are not consistent across lan-
guages. Particles in Algonquian cover a wide array of functions such as quantifiers,
numerals, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions (Oxford ; : ).
Particles in Chitimacha, on the other hand, are used for preverbs, postpositions, nega-
tion, topic marking, discourse markers, and interjections. There is no typological proto-
typical core to particles as a word class.
9.4.2.5 Pronouns
Pronouns are words that either refer to discourse participants (I, you, s/he), refer ana-
phorically to referents that are activated in the discourse (Kibrik : ), or otherwise
stand in for nouns. Pronouns referring to discourse participants are called personal
pronouns, while the others are sometimes called proforms (Bhat : ). Personal pro-
nouns may be syntactically free words (free pronouns), affixes on the verb (bound pro-
nouns), or clitics (clitic pronouns). The following example from Mohawk (Iroquoian)
includes both the free pronoun í:se’ ‘you’ and the bound pronoun sa- ‘you’.

206 Daniel W. Hieber
() Mohawk (Iroquoian) (Mithun : )
Í:seʼ tókaʼ wà:kehreʼ tókaʼ thé:nenʼ
íseʼ tokaʼ waʼ-k-ehr-eʼ tokaʼ thenenʼ
 you maybe -.-think- maybe something
 you maybe I thought maybe something
sarì:waienʼ ne ahsheriʼwanón:tonhseʼ.
sa-rihw-a-ien-ʼ ne a-hshe-riʼwanonton-hs-eʼ
 .-matter-have- the -/-ask-.-
 you issue have the you would ask her
 ‘I thought that you might have some questions to ask her.’
Southern Pomo has clitic pronouns rather than affixes:
() Southern Pomo (Pomoan) (Walker : )
mihyanakʰ:eʔwamt aʔa
mihyana-kʰ:e=ʔwa=m t a =ʔa
 kill-=.=.=.
 ‘I’m going to kill you.’
All languages have free pronouns, irrespective of whether they also have bound or clitic
pronouns. In North American languages, discourse participants are predominantly
expressed using bound pronouns on the verb (Dryer a). In these languages, the
functions of the pronouns are divided between the bound and free forms. The bound
pronouns are used to refer to and track referents in the discourse, while the free pro-
nouns accomplish the various other functions, such as focus/emphasis, cleft construc-
tions, topicalization, antitopicalization, etc. (Mithun ; ).
There are many types of proforms, including demonstrative (), indefinite (),
interrogative (), possessive (), and relative (), among others.
() Demonstrative: Potawotami (Algic) (Lockwood : )
Apte ode gminen.
apte ode gminen
 half .near I.give.you
 ‘I’ll give you half of this.’
() Indefinite: Seneca (Iroquoian) (Chafe : )
Ëké:owi’ sö:ga:’.
 I’ll tell them someone
 ‘I’ll tell someone.’
() Interrogative: Southern Pomo (Pomoan) (Walker : )
čaʔ:aʔkam:u ʔaṭʰ:a ʔahsoduy
čaʔ:a=ʔka=m:u ʔaṭʰ:a ʔahso-duy-∅
 who== gravel throw.many.small--
 ‘who threw the gravel?’

Word classes 207
() Possessive: Creek (Muskogean) (Martin : )
ca-nâːki-t ôː-s
 .-thing- be.-
 ‘It’s mine.’
() Relative: Tuscarora (Iroquoian)
Thwé:ʼn waʼkayęʼnaʼnitʼúthahs haʼ káhneʼ kayęʼnęʼnęnhyahr.
(Mithun : )
 all he put them to sleep the who they are guarding him
 ‘He put to sleep all those who were guarding him.’
9.5 Issues in word-class research
This section describes the most prominent themes in research on word classes in North
America. The difficulties in determining word classes in North American languages are
decidedly different from those presented by languages in other areas of the world. For
North American languages, there are three recurring questions in the study of word
classes and lexical categories in particular: ) at what level a word is categorized (root,
stem, or entire inflected word; §.), ) whether a given language distinguishes noun
and verb (§.), and ) whether a given language has an adjective category (which has
already been discussed in §..).
The widespread (but not ubiquitous) presence of (poly)synthesis in North American
languages (Mithun b: ; Rice [this volume]) means that a morphological distinc-
tion between nouns, verbs, and, when present, adjectives, is often quite clear. Words
tend to have multiple affixes indicating their word class. In the following example from
Nez Perce (Sahaptian), there are a tense marker and a perfective aspect marker– both
categories typically associated with verbs.
() Nez Perce (Sahaptian)
hi-pe-nees-ex-n-e
 .-SBJ--see--.
 ‘they saw us/you (pl.)/them’ (Deal : )
Similarly, nouns in Nez Perce are marked for case (their role in the sentence) (Deal :
), a feature which is typically associated with nouns.
Given these clear morphological distinctions, it may seem surprising that there
could be any ambiguity regarding word classes in North American languages. Nonethe-
less, the potential for ambiguity in lexical categories can occur at the root, stem, or even
whole word level, and words may be categorized differently at different levels (Jacobsen
: ; Mithun : ; Haag : ; Lois et al. : ; Mithun a: ;
Clemens : ). Section. shows how this ambiguity surfaces at these different
levels in the languages of North America, and how categorization depends on the level
of analysis (root, stem, or word).

208 Daniel W. Hieber
9.5.1 Locus of categoriality
In morphologically complex languages, words have an internal structure, so that some
morphemes are more central to the core meaning of the word than others. The mor-
pheme that provides the core sense of a word is called the root. For example, in Chitim-
acha the root ni- ‘water’ is used as the base for a number of different words, including
nen- ‘go out of water’, nicwa- ‘approach water’, nitgext- ‘dump into water’, niduwa- ‘fall
into water’, and others (Swadesh b: ). Each of the forms just listed are called
stems, defined as the part of the word which serves as the basis for all its inflected forms.
The stem nicwa-, for example, serves as the base for the inflected forms nicwi ‘s/he
approaches water’, nicwicuki ‘I will approach water’, nicwipuyna ‘they used to approach
water’, etc. Each of these inflectional possibilities is called a wordform.
Words may be categorized differently depending on whether one is analyzing the
root, stem, or wordform. In the West Greenlandic (Eskaleut) language, the lexical cate-
gory of a word is typically obvious at all three levels. In example () the nominal root
aamaruti- ‘coal’ takes various suffixes which create new stems, changing the word at
different points from a noun to a verb and back again. Affixes which change the class
of a word are called derivational affixes. At each step of derivation in West Greenlandic,
the category of the word is clear.
() West Greenlandic (Eskaleut) (Fortescue : )
aamaruti-ssar-siur-vi-tua-a-suq
 coal--look.for-place-only-be-.
  >  >  >  >  >  > 
 ‘which is the only place for getting coal’
In other North American languages, roots do not seem to be categorized for word class.
In these languages, stems can be categorized but roots cannot. Haag () argues that
Cherokee is one such language. Cherokee has many words which are composed of multi-
ple roots compounded together; however, it is impossible to determine what the category
of the resulting compound will be based on the roots. The roots are simply put together
in a way that makes sense for their meanings, and then a suffix is added that clarifies the
lexical category (Haag : ). Example () shows two roots in Cherokee.
() Cherokee (Iroquoian) (Haag : )
 a. -jat- ‘attach asymmetrically at an indentation’
 b. -húú- ‘stoma, opening’ (allomorph -ʔúú)
Example () shows four compounds that can be formed using these roots.
() Cherokee (Iroquoian) (Haag : –)
 a. tii-húú-jaʔt-î
  .-opening-attached-thing
  ‘lunchbox (with two handles)’

Word classes 209
 b. a-húú-jaʔt-î
  -opening-attached-thing
  ‘pitcher’
 c. jii-ʔúú-jaʔt-vvkâ
  -opening-attached-.
  ‘I just now attached a handle to something (e.g., a bucket)’
  ‘I just now caught something by the mouth with a hook or attachment.’
 d. tee-jíí-ʔúú-jaʔt-vvkâ
  .--opening-attached-.
  ‘I just now attached something with more than one handle to something.’
Though in each case the stem is formed from the same combination of roots, in (a) and
(b) the result is a noun, and in (c) and (d) the result is a verb. Haag takes this and other
evidence to suggest that lexical categorization is not relevant to Cherokee roots, only
stems.
A similar situation occurs in Algonquian languages, in which lexical stems are
formed of a combination of up to three components, called initial, medial, and final in
the Algonquian literature (Goddard ; Macaulay and Salmons ; Lockwood :
–; Oxford [this volume]). The initial is generally considered the root of the word,
but it is the final component which determines the lexical category of the stem. Roots in
Algonquian languages are therefore unspecified for lexical category. Examples () and
() demonstrate how the same initial (shown in boldface) can be used to form either a
noun or verb stem in Ojibwe and Menominee (both Algonquian languages).
() Ojibwe (Algic) (Nichols )
 a. miskozi
miskw-izi
  red-.
  ‘it is red’
 b. miskobag
miskw-bagw
  red-leaf
  ‘red leaf’
() Menominee (Algic) (Monica Macaulay, p.c.)
 a. maehkuakom
maehkw-akom
  red-skin/hide/covering/garment
  ‘red blanket’
 b. maehkīhotaw
maehkw-hot-a-w
  red-paint--
  ‘s/he paints it red’

210 Daniel W. Hieber
In the Ojibwe example in (), the same initial miskw- ‘red’ is used to form both a noun
‘red leaf’ and a verb ‘it is red’, while in the Menominee example in () the initial
maehkw- ‘red’ is likewise used to form both the noun ‘red blanket’ and the verb ‘s/he
paints it red’. Thus, in Algonquian it is only stems which are categorized for lexical cat-
egory, not the root components.
In some languages, even the stem can be neutral or ambiguous with respect to
lexical category. Frachtenberg (: ) claims that any stem in Coos (Coosan) may be
used either nominally or verbally as appropriate. This is illustrated in ().
() Coos (Coosan) (Frachtenberg : , , )
 a. poːʷkw-is
  slave-
  ‘slave’
 b. ŋ-poːʷkw-its
  -enslave-
  ‘I enslaved him’
 c. humis
  ‘woman’
 d. n - huːʷmis-its
  -marry-
  ‘I marry (her)’
 e. tsoːweˣtɬ
  ‘grease’
 f. n - tsoːʷˣtɬ-ts
  -grease-
  ‘I greased it’
 g. tɬʼkwiː
  ‘blanket’
 h. tɬʼkwi-t
  cover-
  ‘she covered (them) with blankets’
For the Tonkawa (isolate) language, Hoijer (: –) famously claimed, “To apply
the classificatory notion of “parts of speech” to Tonkawa would do extreme violence to
the spirit of the language.” He provides the following example as evidence of his claim:
() Tonkawa (isolate) (Hoijer : )
 a. notox-ʔaː-la
  hoe--.
  ‘the hoe’
 b. notx-o-ʔ
  hoe--.
  ‘he hoes it’

Word classes 211
Andrade (: ) likewise analyzes Quileute as a language where stems may be used
as either noun or verb, assuming their function in context. In other languages, such as
Hopi (Uto-Aztecan), most stems are specified for category, but a subset are ambivalent
and may be used as either noun or verb (Whorf : ).
Even fully-inflected wordforms with clear morphological marking of their class
may nonetheless blur the distinction between noun and verb. In many North American
languages, fully-inflected morphological verbs may be used as nominals without any
special affixes or other modification, as the following examples illustrate.
() Chitimacha (isolate) (Swadesh b: ; Swanton : )
 a. dzampuyna
dza-m-puy-na
  thrust---.
  ‘they usually thrust/spear (with it)’
  ‘spear’
 b. pamtuyna
pa-m-tuy-na
  ford---.
  ‘they usually cross (it)’
  ‘bridge’
() Cayuga (Iroquoian) (Mithun : )
 a. o tekho nyáʔthaʔ
ye-ate-khw-o ni-aʔt-haʔ
  .--meal-make--
  ‘one makes a meal with it’
  ‘restaurant’
 b. kao tanéhkwi
ka-ro t-a-nehkwi
  .-log--haul.
  ‘it hauls logs’
  ‘horse’
() Navajo (Na-Dene) (Young : )
 a. tsinaaʼeeɬ
tsi(n)-naaʼeeɬ
  wood-it.moves.about.floating
  ‘ship, boat’
 b. chahaɬheeɬ
  it.is.dark
  ‘darkness’
For Cayuga (and other Iroquoian languages), some morphological verbs have been so
fully lexicalized as nouns that they may no longer be used with their verbal meanings.

212 Daniel W. Hieber
The default meaning of kao tanéhkwi for Cayuga speakers is ‘horse’, not ‘it hauls logs’.
Other verbs may retain both uses, while others lack any nominal meaning at all. Mor-
phological verbs in Iroquoian therefore each sit on a cline from fully verbal to fully
nominal, with many cases in between (Mithun ).
In other languages, fully-inflected nouns and verbs can appear superficially similar,
taking affixes of the exact same form, but nonetheless belong to clearly distinct word
classes. In Central Alaskan Yup’ik, for example, the forms of noun inflections are a
subset of the forms of verb inflections (Sadock : ). That is, noun endings all look
like verb endings (but not vice versa), and even have similar functions, as the following
examples illustrate:
() Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskaleut) (Mithun a: )
 a. qaya-q‘kayak’ 
kaigtu-q‘he/she/it is hungry’ 
 b. qaya-k‘two kayaks’ 
kaigtu-k‘they two are hungry’ 
 c. qaya-t‘three or more kayaks’ 
kaigtu-t‘they all are hungry’ 
Possessive suffixes on nouns likewise share their forms with transitive person suffixes
on verbs:
() Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskaleut) (Mithun a: )
 a. angya-qa ‘my boat’ /
ner’a-qa ‘I am eating it’ /
 b. angya-gka ‘my two boats’ /
ner’a-gka ‘I am eating both of them’ /
 c. angya-nka ‘my boats’ /
ner’a-nka ‘I am eating them’ /
 d. angya-a‘his/her boat’ /
nera-a‘he/she/it is eating it’ /
 e. angya-k‘his/her two boats’ /
ner’a-k‘he/she/it is eating both of them’ /
 f. angya-i‘his/her boats’ /
nera-i‘he/she/it is eating them’ /
However, any transitive verb whose object is not a third person has suffixes which never
appear in nominal inflections, such as the examples in ().
() Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskaleut) (Sadock : )
takua-anga ‘s/he sees me’ /
takua-atigut ‘s/he sees us’ /
takua-akkit ‘I see you (sg.)’ /
takua-rma ‘you (sg.) see me’ /

Word classes 213
The reason for these similarities is that many verbal inflections arose historically from
nominalizations (Jacobson ; Woodbury ; Mithun ; Berge ). This is an
example of a process known as insubordination, where subordinate clauses or noun
phrases are reanalyzed as main clauses (Mithun ; Evans ; Evans and Watanabe
). Despite having a common origin as noun suffixes, verbal and nominal endings
in Yup’ik are now nonetheless two distinct sets of affixes belonging to different word
classes.
Another case of superficial similarity between nouns and verbs comes from
Menominee:
() Menominee (Algic) (Monica Macaulay p.c.)
 a. askēhnen 
askēhnen-w 
  be.fresh- 
  ‘it is fresh/raw’ 
 b. askēhnen 
askēhnen-w 
  be.fresh- 
  ‘raw thing’ (Monica Macaulay p.c.)
While the words in () have the same surface and underlying forms, this is merely a
historical accident; the third person -w suffix and the nominalizing -w suffix are unre-
lated.
Not only the category label, but the size of the category can vary depending on the
level of analysis. Lindsey and Scancarelli (), for example, argue that Cherokee has
a large, open class of adjectives when considering the level of the inflected word, but a
small, closed class of adjectives when considering the level of the root. More drastically,
Chitimacha lacks adjective stems entirely, but nonetheless has an open class of adjec-
tives at the word level. All adjectives in Chitimacha are formed by adding an adjectiviz-
ing suffix to a verb stem, as shown in the examples in ().
() Chitimacha (isolate) (Swadesh b)
bixtigi ‘industrious’ < bixte- ‘be industrious’
dantigi ‘cluttered’ < dante- ‘be cluttered’
deyktigi ‘wet’ < deykte- ‘be wet’
dixigi ‘bad-smelling’ < dixe- ‘smell’ ()
dzahtsigi ‘tasty’ < dzahtst- ‘season’ ()
hedigi ‘near’ < hedi- ‘move near (horizontally)’ ()
5Note that the final /w/ in both examples is lost due to a synchronic process of final consonant cluster
reduction.

214 Daniel W. Hieber
Adjectives may be formed from either intransitive or transitive verbs. In discourse, verb
stems vary as to how frequently they appear with the adjective suffix -gi. Some verb
stems have become completely lexicalized as adjectives and are never used with regular
verbal inflection. By contrast, many verb stems are never used with -gi. Most verbs sit
somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. The verb huy- ‘be good’, for example, appears
 times in Swadesh’s (a) Chitimacha corpus as the adjective huygi ‘good’, and 
times as a verb.
In this section we have seen that categorization and level of analysis are crucially
interrelated. Languages differ as to whether words are categorized at the level of the
root, stem, or inflected word. We have also seen that, despite robust morphological
marking on both nouns and verbs, North American languages can nonetheless exhibit
ambiguities between the major lexical categories.
9.5.2 The noun-verb distinction
Perhaps the most famous claim that a language lacks a noun-verb distinction involves
the Eskaleut family (Thalbitzer : ). As mentioned above, nominal and verbal
affixes in this family are identical thanks to a historical process whereby nominalized
subordinate verbs were reanalyzed as main verbs (Mithun ), which led Thalbitzer
to claim that Eskaleut has no noun-verb distinction. Sadock () and Mithun (a)
have strongly criticized this claim. They show that derivational affixes both select for
and produce a specific category (noun or verb). For example, the -aq suffix shown in (a)
below must attach to a verb root and always produces a noun, while the suffixes in (b)
must attach to verb roots and always produce new verbs.
() Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskaleut) (Mithun a: )
 a. ega- ‘boil’ ega-aq ‘boiled fish’
mumigte- ‘turn over’ mumigt-aq ‘pancake’
 b. piqertur- ‘whack’ piqertu-ar- ‘whack repeatedly’
qavange- ‘fall asleep’ qavang-caar- ‘try to sleep’
This seemingly clear-cut picture is however complicated by two facts. First, while %
of roots in Yup’ik are purely nominal and % are purely verbal, % of roots have
both nominal and verbal senses (Mithun a: ), raising the possibility that these
roots are polycategorial, or do not fall clearly into either the noun or verb class. If a
root has both nominal and verbal senses this way, any derivational affixes it takes will
utilize the meaning of the category that affix selects for (Mithun a: –). This
is exemplified in ().

Word classes 215
() Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskaleut) (Mithun a: )
equk ‘thing carried on one’s shoulder; wood’
equg- ‘carry on one’s shoulder’
-iaq ‘made thing’
equiaq ‘chopped firewood’
-iur- ‘be occupied with’
eqiur- ‘chop wood’
The root equk/equg- has both a nominal meaning ‘thing carried on one’s shoulder; wood’
and a verbal meaning ‘carry on one’s shoulder’. The suffix -iaq ‘made thing’ must attach
to nouns and always produces a noun stem, while the suffix -iur- must attach to nouns
and always produces a verb stem. In () the result of attaching either of these suffixes
to equk are meanings based on the nominal sense of ‘wood’ rather than the verbal sense
of ‘carry on one’s shoulder’. Equiaq does not mean ‘wood carried on one’s shoulder’ and
eqiur- does not mean ‘be occupied with carrying on one’s shoulder’. This shows that
derivational suffixes in Yup’ik select for roots from specific lexical categories, or at the
very least specific nominal or verbal senses of a root. Mithun (a) uses data like these
to argue that cases like equk/equg- are two separate homophonous forms, rather than a
single polycategorial root.
The second complication in determining lexical categories in Yup’ik is that many
derivational suffixes may attach to either nominal or verbal stems, and moreover about
–% of derivational suffixes create stems which themselves are ambiguous between
noun and verb (Sadock : ). The examples in () demonstrate these problems.
() Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskaleut) (Mithun a: –)
ui ‘husband’ ui-lkuk ‘no-good husband’ (n.)
yuk ‘person’ yu-lkuk ‘no-good person’ (n.)
ayaq- ‘leave’ aya-lkug- ‘no-good one leave’ (v.)
tupag- ‘awaken’ tupa-lkug- ‘no-good one awaken’ (v.)
ii ‘eye’ ii-ckegt- ‘have well-formed eyes’ (v.)
cingik ‘point, tip’ cingi-ckegt- ‘be sharply pointed’ (v.)
tungu- ‘be black’ tungu-ckegt- ‘be very black’ (v.)
nepete- ‘stick’ nepe-ckegt- ‘climb, balance well’ (v.)
The suffix -lkuk/-lkug- attaches to either nouns or verbs and retains the original category
of the root. The suffix -ckegt- attaches to either nouns or verbs and always produces a
verb. What does not appear to be attested, however, are suffixes which attach to either
nouns or verbs and produce stems which themselves may be either noun or verb. In
other words, derivational suffixes are either category-preserving or specify the category
of the resulting stem. There are no truly ambiguous cases.
An even stronger challenge to the universality of the noun-verb distinction comes
from the languages of the Pacific Northwest. Though comprising multiple unrelated
families (Salishan, Wakashan, Chimakuan, Tsimshianic, Chinookan, and the isolate

216 Daniel W. Hieber
Kutenai), all the languages of this region blur the noun-verb distinction in similar ways,
a situation which arose out of an extended period of contact between these language
families (see Thomason [this volume]). In these languages, it is often claimed that any
lexical stem may function indiscriminately as either noun or verb. The following data
from Lillooet (Salishan) are exemplary of the kind of phenomena which have led lin-
guists to these claims.
() Lillooet (Salishan) (Davis, Gillon, and Matthewson : e)
 a. šmúɬač ta=kʷúkʷpiʔ=a
  woman =chief=
  ‘The chief is a woman.’
 b. kʷúkʷpiʔ ta=šmúɬač=a
  chief =woman=
  ‘The woman is a chief.’
 c. ləχləχ ta=kʷúkʷpiʔ=a
  smart =chief=
  ‘The chief is smart.’
 d. kʷúkʷpiʔ ta=ləχləχ=a
  chief =smart=
  ‘The smart one is a chief.’
 e. ƛ’iq ta=kʷúkʷpiʔ=a
  arrive =chief=
  ‘The chief arrived.’
 f. kʷúkʷpiʔ ta=ƛ’íq=a
  chief =arrive=
  ‘The one who arrived is a chief.’
 g. ʔác’χ-ən-č-aš ta=kʷúkʷpiʔ=a
  see--.- =chief=
  ‘The chief saw me.’
 h. kʷúkʷpiʔ ta=ʔac’χ-ən-č-áš=a
  chief =see--.-=
  ‘The one who saw me is a chief.’
While the data in () would appear to support an analysis of Lillooet stems as polycate-
gorial or unspecified for lexical category, Davis, Gillon, and Matthewson () present
additional evidence that this noun-verb flexibility has its limits. While it is true that any
stem in Lillooet may function as a verb, there are other areas of the grammar where it
is necessary to maintain a distinction between noun and verb stems. First, only nominal
stems may function as the head of a relative clause. Second, only nominal stems may
have modifiers when functioning as either an argument or nominal predicate.
Similar categorial restrictions on relativization have been described for Gitksan
(Tsimshianic; [Davis, Gillon, and Matthewson ]) and Lushootseed (Salishan; [Beck
]). Though earlier work on Salishan languages argued for the lack of a noun-verb

Word classes 217
distinction (Kuipers ; Kinkade ), subsequent research has found a growing
body of criteria – albeit subtle – for distinguishing noun from verb (Hébert ;
van Eijk and Hess ; Jelinek and Demers ; Mattina ; Haag ; Beck :
–; Montler ). The most prominent criteria distinguishing noun and verb is
the exclusive ability of nominal stems to take possessive affixes. While the current con-
sensus among Salishanists is therefore that the languages do in fact have a noun-verb
distinction, it should be appreciated that the realization of these categories is drasti-
cally different from most languages of the world. The categories noun and verb are at
most only lightly grammaticalized in these languages, and vanishingly few parts of the
grammar depend on this distinction.
The noun-verb distinction is even less strongly grammaticalized in the neighbor-
ing Wakashan languages. Swadesh (: ) provides the following examples– much
discussed over the last century– as evidence of noun-verb flexibility in the Wakashan
language Nuuchahnulth.
() Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) (Swadesh : )
 a. qoːʔas-ma ʔiː-ʔiː
  man-. large-
  ‘The large one is a man.’
 b. ʔiː-maː qoːʔas-ʔi
  large-. man-
  ‘The man is large.’
 c. mamoːk-ma qoːʔas-ʔi
  work-. man-
  ‘The man is working.’
 d. qoːʔas-ma mamoːk-ʔi
  man-. work-
  ‘The working one is a man.’
Like with the Salishan languages, there are however subtle differences between the
distribution of stems with nominal vs. verbal meanings. While any lexical stem can
serve as a verb, when nominal stems do this they are limited to the durative aspect,
and can only be used for existential, classifying, or identifying expressions (Nakayama
: ). Conversely, when verbal stems function as arguments, they appear with the
definite marker -ʔi (Nakayama : ). Only noun stems may take possessive affixes.
Additionally, nouns may be modified by property concepts, quantity, or quantifiers,
but may not be modified directly by qualifying expressions like ‘almost’ or ‘barely’;
the reverse holds true for verbs (Nakayama : ). Generally speaking, there is a
strong discourse tendency for words from each group to be used for their preferred
function (nominal stems as arguments, verbal stems as predicates), and when those
stems are presented in isolation to speakers, the translation offered tends to represent
their default category (Nakayama : ). However, all of the above criteria show
exceptions: stems may have both nominal and verbal uses, or may occur sporadically

218 Daniel W. Hieber
in non-prototypical roles, and verbal stems may become lexicalized as nouns (similar to
examples ()–() above), in which case they do not require the definite suffix (Jacobsen
: ).
Though languages of the Pacific Northwest have received much of the attention
concerning the noun vs. verb distinction, the issue is prominent in many other language
families as well. Sasse (; ; a; b) claims that Iroquoian languages do not
distinguish noun and verb on the basis of superficial similarities between nominal and
verbal affixes. Mithun () shows that these similarities are indeed superficial, and
that the two classes are clearly distinct. Mithun does however present the interesting
case of morphological verbs that have been lexicalized as nouns, as discussed in §.
above. For Siouan, Helmbrecht () investigates the noun-verb distinction in Hocank
and finds that there is no morphological construction that specifically targets nouns.
Any stem may function as either an argument or predicate. Helmbrecht goes on to argue
for a noun-verb distinction on negative evidence: certain verbal inflectional categories
do not occur with stems expressing nominal concepts.
Another interesting way in which the noun-verb distinction is blurred in some
North American languages is through kinship verbs– that is, kinship relations which
are expressed as verbs rather than nouns. Kinship verbs have been documented in
Algonquian (Bloomfield ), Seneca (Iroquoian; Chafe []), Tuscarora (Iroquoian;
Mithun Williams [: –]), Yuman (Yuman-Cochimí; Langdon []), Cahuilla
(Uto-Aztecan; Seiler [; ; ]), Cayuga (Iroquoian; Sasse [b]) and Mohawk
(Iroquoian; Mithun [; in prep]). Example () shows a few examples of kinship
verbs in Mohawk.
() Mohawk (Iroquoian) (Mithun in prep: Sec. .)
 a. rakhsótha
rak-hsot=ha
  >.-be.grandparent.to=
  he is grandparent to me
  ‘my grandfather’
 a. riiaterè:ʼa
rii-atereʼ=a
  >.-have.as.grandchild=
  I have him as grandchild
  ‘my grandson’
 b. iatateʼkèn:ʼa
hi-atate-ʼkenʼ=a
  ..--have.as.sibling=
  they two have each other as siblings
  ‘those two siblings’, ‘his brother’, ‘her brother’, ‘his sister’
Because kinship verbs have meanings that are rather atypical for both verbs and nouns
(atypical as verbs because they refer, and atypical as nouns because they describe a

Word classes 219
relation), they often result in a class of words which have a mix of nominal and verbal
characteristics (Evans : ).
One final issue in the study of flexible noun-verb categories is directionality: while
it is common for North American languages to allow most or all of its words to function
directly as verbs without any overt derivational morphology– a phenomenon called
omnipredicativity (Launey , )– not all words may function directly as argu-
ments. The most well-known case of omnipredicativity is Classical Nahuatl (Launey
, ), for which the term was originally proposed. We have also seen this phenom-
enon at work in Salishan and Wakashan languages above. The debate over the noun-
verb distinction in languages of the Pacific Northwest is in large part a debate over
directionality: any lexical item in these languages may function as a verb, but the debate
hinges crucially on whether lexical items have special behavior or marking when func-
tioning as nouns, which would provide evidence that some roots are truly verbal. Beck
(), for example, analyzes Lushootseed as exhibiting unidirectional omnipredica-
tivity. The examples in () show how a wide variety of words can function as verbs,
including lexical pronouns (a), adverbs (b), numerals (c), interrogatives (d), and even
prepositional phrases I. (Note that Lushootseed sentences are generally verb-initial.)
() Lushootseed (Salishan) (Beck : –)
 a. ʔəca kʷi ɬuɬiɬičʼid tiʔiɬ tatačulbixʷ
ʔəca kʷi ɬu=ɬi-ɬičʼi-d tiʔiɬ tatačulbixʷ
  I  =-cut-  big.game
  ‘the one who will cut up the big game animal is me’
 c. tudiʔ tə dukʷibəɬ
tudiʔ tə dukʷibəɬ  
  over.there  Changer  
  ‘Changer is over there’
 d. Saliʔ kʷi ɬuʔəƛʼtxʷ čəxʷ čʼƛʼaʔ
Saliʔ kʷi ɬu=ʔəƛʼ-txʷ čəxʷ čʼƛʼaʔ
  two  =come- . stone
  ‘you will bring two stones’ (lit. ‘the stones that you will bring are two’)
 d. tučadəxʷ čəxʷ
tu=čad=əxʷ čəxʷ
  =where=now .
  ‘where have you been?’
 e. tulʼʔal čəd sqaət
tulʼ-ʔal čəd sqaət
  -at . Skagit
  ‘I am from Skagit’
However, the distinction between noun and verb in Lushootseed appears in other
places, for example in negation contexts. When nominal stems occur with the negative
predicate xʷiʔ, the resulting meaning is ‘there is no’, as shown in ().

220 Daniel W. Hieber
() Lushootseed (Salishan) (Beck : )
 a. xʷiʔ gʷəstutubš
xʷiʔ gʷə=stu-tubš
   =-man
  ‘there are no boys’
 e. xʷiʔ gʷəstabəxʷ
xʷiʔ gʷə=stab=əxʷ
   =what=now
  ‘there is nothing (left)’
When verbal stems occur with the same negative predicate, the resulting meaning is to
negate the verb. Additionally, the verb must be nominalized with the s= proclitic:
() Lushootseed (Salishan) (Beck : )
 f. xʷiʔ uʔxʷ gʷəsɬaʔ ʔə tiʔəʔ čaləs
xʷiʔ uʔxʷ gʷə=s=ɬaʔ ʔə tiʔəʔ čaləs-s
    ==arrive   hand-.
  ‘his hand still cannot reach it’ (lit. ‘there is no his hand’s reaching it’)
 g. xʷiʔəxʷ gʷəsx aabs dxʷʔal sɬčil ʔə tsiʔəʔ bədaʔs
xʷiʔ=əxʷ gʷə=s=x aab=s dxʷ-ʔal s=ɬčil ʔə
  =now ==cry=. -at =arrive 
tsiʔəʔ bda-s
 : offspring-.
 ‘(the baby) isn’t crying (even) when her daughter arrives’
Both this and the preceding section have demonstrated the ways that North Ameri-
can languages call into question even the most fundamental distinction between nouns
and verbs. Though most linguists working on languages which are controversial in this
regard share the consensus that the distinction is present but merely subtle, the diver-
sity of ways in which languages blur this distinction is nonetheless remarkable. For such
a seemingly fundamental distinction, there are many North American languages which
have surprisingly few areas of the grammar that are sensitive to it.
9.6 Conclusion
This chapter has illustrated just some of the myriad ways that North American lan-
guages structure their words into classes. Most, perhaps all, North American languages
present challenges to the definition or status of traditional word classes. As a general
tendency, North American languages do not grammaticalize rigid distinctions between
word classes to the same extent that Indo-European languages do. Sometimes this dif-
ference is drastic, as in the case of Nuuchahnulth– in which word classes are mere
discourse tendencies– and sometimes less so, as in the case of Central Alaskan Yup’ik–

Word classes 221
in which the majority of roots and derivational affixes are strongly specified for lexical
category, but where nonetheless a minority of roots and affixes show ambiguity. The
extensive lack of sensitivity in different areas of the grammars of North American lan-
guages to the distinctions between reference (nouns), predication (verbs), and modifica-
tion (adjectives) suggest that the development of lexical categories in a language is not
necessarily a given. Certain historical processes are common, and frequently lead to the
grammaticalization of the same or similar categories across languages, but never in all
areas of the grammar, or for all words in the lexicon, or in exactly the same way (Hen-
geveld a, b, ). The data from North American languages, taken together,
challenge our fundamental understanding of word classes.
Acknowledgments: This chapter has benefited from comments from many people.
Thanks are due to George Aaron Broadwell, Bernard Comrie, Jack Martin, and two anon-
ymous reviewers for their feedback. Special thanks are due also to Toshihide Nakay-
ama for his early collaboration on the outline for this chapter and later feedback, and
to Monica Macaulay and Hunter Lockwood for helpful discussions about Algonquian
grammatical structures. Finally, my thanks go to the editors for providing me the oppor-
tunity to contribute to this volume, for their helpful feedback, and for their work in
making this project possible. All errors and shortcomings are of course wholly my own.
List of Abbreviations
1 first person
2 second person
3 third person
4 fourth person
 absolutive
 agent
 andative
 applicative
 article
 attenuative
 auxiliary
 benefactive
 causative
 centrifugal
 centripetal
 conditional
 continuative
 copula
 contemporative
 declarative
 definite
 demonstrative
 determiner
 diminutive
 directive transitivizer (Lillooet)
directional (Southern Pomo)
 distal
 dual
 durative
 external causative
 emphatic
 epenthetic
 ergative
 evidential
 existential
 feminine
 falling grade
 feminine-indefinite
 factual
 future
 habitual
 internal causative
 immediate
 indicative

222 Daniel W. Hieber
 indefinite
 inferential
 instrumental
 interrogative
 intransitive
 imperfective
 irrealis
 masculine
 momentaneous
 proper name
 narrative
 negative
 neuter/neutral position
 non-first person
 nominative
 non-specific
 nominalizer
 object
 past
 patient
 perfective
 plural
 pluractional
 possessive
 preposition
 present
 proximal
 particle
 participle
 reflexive
 remote
 subject
 subjunctive
 singular
 stative
 thematic clitic (Creek)
 telic
 theme
 transitive
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