| Summary: | The present paper aims to examine the polysynthetic characteristics of the Koryak verb, paying attention to both the derivational and inflectional processes that apply to it.More concretely, it tries to answer the following questions. 1) By what means can a verbal stem be expanded through derivational processes? 2) How is the expanded complex verbal stem completed as a holophrase? The result of the examination reveals the following points. (A) First, the verbal polysynthesis of Koryak is ensured by incorporation, especially noun ncorporation (NI). In NI, polysynthetic incorporative stems are derived through NP incorporation, multiple nominal incorporation, double P-argument incorporation (though not readily accepted), and adverbial incorporation. (B) In addition, various derivational affixes such as valency-changing, stem-modifying, argument-modifying, and word-class-changing ones, help to promote the degree of the verbal synthesis. (C) Similar to verb stems in NI, derivational affixes that express concrete verbal meanings can also derive polysynthetic holophrases by (quasi)-incorporating one or more modifiers, and adverbial stems. (D) Verbal inflectional categories such as aspect, mood, and agreement in person and number with the core arguments enclose and shape the polysynthetic incorporative stem into a holophrase that can stand alone without a core argument. The present paper also suggests that Koryak shows an eclectic type of polysynthesis combining some characteristics of the incorporating type (e.g., Iroquian) and affixing type (e.g., Eskimo). However, Koryak is derivationally far less complex and elaborated when compared with Eskimo, which has extremely polysynthetic verbs with complex embedded constructions and repetitive word-class-changing processes.
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