Positional Slots in Saliba Complex Verbs

Saliba, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea, has complex predicates in which two or more stems combine to form a single word. The stems in these complex verbs can express a number of functions including cause and result, manner, directionality, and other adverbial-like functions. It is possible to identify a number of positional slots in these constructions, based on the sequential ordering and cooccurrence restrictions of stems. The slots in complex verbs host different classes of stems, and different types of relations between the slots can be distinguished.