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Lexical flexibility in Teop - a corpus-based distributional analysis of prototypical action, object and property words This paper demonstrates that the documentation of a previously unresearched language, may provide data that challenge typological models of word class systems like the parts-of-speech hierarchy proposed by Hengeveld, Rijkoff and Siewierska (1997). In Teop, an isolating Oceanic language, content words occur as the head of referential, TAM marked predicative and modifying phrases (RefP, TAMP and ModP) and as juxtaposed modifiers in compounding constructions within these three kinds of phrase. A distributional corpus analysis of prototypical object, action and property words, which strictly applies Evans' and Osada's (2005) criteria, reveals that both object and action words occur as the head of RefPs and TAMPs and that action and property words both function as the head of TAMPs and ModPs. However, object words do not occur as the head of ModPs and property words not as the head of RefPs. ThusTeop grammatically distinguishes between object, action and property words, i.e. nouns, verbs and adjectives, but at the same time it shows regular patters of lexical flexibility. The quantitative corpus analysis, however, shows a very strong preference of nouns and verbs for their prototypical positions, whereas the distribution of adjectives is more variable. head of RefP head of TAM.P head of ModP object w. (nouns) + + - action w. (verbs) + + + property w. (adjectives) - + + If lexical flexibility is considered a syntactic property of lexemes, Teop verbs can be said to be more flexible than nouns and adjectives because they occur in more functions. On the other hand, flexibility can also be regarded as a property of constructions, and in this sense the head of TAMP is the most flexible position as it can accommodate all three word classes. In compounding constructions nouns and verbs modify other nouns and verbs, while adjectives only modify nouns. In order to modify verbs, adjectives must be transformed into manner adverbs by the prefix va-. This distinction between adjectives and derived manner adverbs in compounding constructions is independent of the syntactic function of the modified verb or noun. A verb must always be modified by a va-marked adverb, even if it functions as the head of a RefP and correspondingly, a noun is always modified by an adjective. modifier of N modifier of V noun + + verb + + adjective + - derived manner adverb - + The qualitative and quantitative corpus-based distributional analysis of Teop content words shows that lexical and constructional flexibility are gradient concepts which may be fruitful for language specific as well as cross-linguistic typological research on word class systems and the interaction of lexicon and grammar. References Evans, Nicholas & Toshki Osada. 2005a. Mundari: the myth of a language without word classes. In Linguistic Typology 9.3, pp. 351-390. Hengefeld, Kees & Jan Rijkoff & Anna Siewierska. 1997. Parts-of-speech systems and word order. In Journal of Linguistics 40, 527-570