Incorporation in Muskogean

Abstract

Each modern Muskogean language contains a number of verbal prefixes, many of which are cognate across the languages. A good number of these, however, reconstruct as independent roots rather than affixes. This incorporation of earlier pre-verbal roots as prefixes is parallel to the previously reported grammaticalization of post-verbal auxiliaries as suffixes. These two phenomena taken together illustrate an overall Muskogean tendency for independent roots to be fused to the main verb.