Pernilla Hallonsten Halling

Summary of root level overlap

Three types of overlap of attr, pred, and adv have been examined on the root level:

[attr
pred], [pred
adv], and [attr
pred
adv]. By far, the most common overlap

is that of all three functions, attested in a great majority of the sample languages. This is a stable finding across languages which shows that, regardless of what other encoding patterns there may be in the three functions, it is extremely common for languages to have one type of root used in all three functions. It can thus be concluded that languages
commonly have related root encoding in the functions of attr, pred, and adv. The
second most common overlap is that of attr and pred, occurring in over a third of the languages. Most of these languages also have an overlap of the same two functions on the lexeme level (see section 6.4.1), although this is not necessarily the case. For instance, an overlap of attr and pred on the level of the lexeme may include a root that is used in all three functions, which would then imply an overlap of all three functions on the root level. It is not surprising that attr and pred, the functions traditionally associated with adjectives, tend to overlap in terms of encoding at the root level. Only five languages

show root overlaps of pred and adv, and there is no language in which an overlap of

attr and adv only is attested on the root level.

3.