Ebook: Ambulas Grammar

Publisher: SIL - Ukarumpa - Papua New Guinea
Date: 1980
Number of pages: 473A word in Ambulas is a construction in the grammatical hierarchy between stem level and phrase level. The word is composed of a single morpheme or of a stem (simple, compound or derived) and a limited number of affixes. The word is a "minimum free form", that is, the smallest unit which can be isolated as a meaningful utterance and which cannot be further broken down into free forms. It may form a sentence. Clitics cannot be isolated in the same way as words but are more free in distribution than affixes » They are described below under 3«1 Some Ambulas words are not inflected, others take limited inflection and one class takes multiple inflection. Words usually expound phrase level slots but may also expound clause, sentence and discourse level slots.