Introduction

The morphosyntactic, semantic, and phonological properties of Warlpiri verbs have been investigated by a number of scholars including Hale (1982, 1983), Hale, Laughren, and Simpson (1995), Harvey and Baker (2005), Laughren (1988, 1992), Legate (2002, 2003, 2008), Levin (1983), Nash (1982, 1986), Reimer (2002, 2003, 2008), and Simpson (1991, 2002). This study will focus on that part of the verbal complex which I will refer to as the ‘thematic core’. It minimally consists of a thematic verb (V) which may be augmented by a non-inflecting preverbal (PV) element of a class which, following Nash 1982, I will refer to as ‘lexical’: [(PV lexical])=V], or by PVs derived from other phrasal categories. I will argue that the thematic core of the larger verbal constituent ‘maps onto’ an event structure which represents its predicate argument structure (PAS) and its Aktionsart properties. This study investigates the relationship between the PV and V forms which instantiate the thematic core, from the perspective of their individual and combined contribution to the underlying event structure. It also compares the event structure of ‘heavy verbs’ (HV) with their ‘light verb’ (LV) homophones, and also with synonymous PV-LV complex verbs.