This paper investigates the phenomenon of ‘classificatory verbs’, i.e. a set of motion and positional verbs that show stem alternations depending on the semantic features of one of their arguments in Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì (Dogrib), based on field notes and documentary sources of the language. The paper shows that Tłı̨chǫ classificatory verbal categories belong to four semantic subclasses which have inconsistent stem inventories caused by the presence or absence of some semantic features. Stem inventories of locative verb systems vary depending on the scalar [ effort ] feature, and those of motion verbs correlate with the scalar [ agentive ] feature. The paper explains why other semantically related verbs do not show stem alternations and proposes contrastive hierarchies to represent variations in stem inventories intra- and cross-linguistically assuming that the selection of a stem for a particular semantic category follows a series of binary choices that characterize the opposition’s active in the language.

中文翻译：

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Tłı̨chǫYatıì中分类动词词干的替代：认知语义说明

本文根据田野笔记和语言的文献资料，研究了“分类动词”现象，即一组动词和位置动词，它们根据Tłı̨chǫYatıì（Dogrib）中一个自变量的语义特征表现出词干交替。 。本文表明，Tłı̨chǫ的分类性语言类别属于四个语义子类，这些子类的词干存量不一致是由于存在或不存在某些语义特征引起的。位置动词系统的词干清单取决于标量[effort]功能，而运动动词的词干清单与标量[agentive]特征相关。