Athapaskan languages are well known for their intricate morphology, in particular the complexity of their verbs. The significance of these languages for linguistic theory is widely acknowledged. In this book, Keren Rice offers a rich typological survey of morpheme ordering in Athapaskan verbs, with implications for both synchronic grammar and language change. She shows that verb structure is in fact widely predictable across Athapaskan languages if appropriate syntactic factors and an overarching principle of semantic scope are taken into account. The presentation also includes a detailed study of argument and aspectual systems. This landmark volume was the first major comparative study of its type for the Athapaskan language family, combining descriptive depth with a contemporary theoretical perspective. Clear and insightful, it will interest Athapaskanists, typologists, historical and theoretical linguists alike.

'This book treats virtually all of the important matters pertaining to the grammatical features of the Athapaskan verb word, in depth for an impressive number of individual languages and in sumptuous comparative detail for languages representative of the family as a whole …The book contains at least a dozen detailed and interesting discussions of the ordering of elements in the Athapaskan verb word. It contains much more than this, however. New analyses of many aspects of the Athapaskan verb are developed. These are consistently of great value and full of the insight and scholarship we have come to expect from this fine linguist and Athapaskanist … Rice's book is a treasure. Though it is organized around the theme of morpheme order, it is a rich source of both problems and solutions in Athapaskan linguistics generally and deserves to be considered a classic in the field.' Ken Hale, Diachronica