Syntax and Word Classes
In an ideal grammar each classificatory word type would belong only to one category and in Mbula that is mostly the case. However, in the following three areas, word-forms exist which are hard to nail down as one or the other:
- verbs and prepositions
- verbs and adverbs
- verbs and instrumental nouns
The occurrence of a form in a wide range of conversational environments can result in the gradual loss of morphological features which are not appropriate to some particular conversational environments as well as the morphological gain of features which are appropriate to other conversational environments. This can mean ultimately either category shift of a word class or even just the general greying of the word classes as iron clad categories.
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