Glossary of Athabaskan terms

[William J Poser]

I think that this is a good idea, but as Andrij and Willem suggest, I think
that a finer classification of the difficulties with these terms is needed.
Off the cuff, I see no problem with these:

areal
classificatory verb
conjugation
derivational potential
discontinuity
distributive
optative
root
semelfactive
stem
verb word

The ones that are actually misleading are:

classifier
gender
iterative
thematic prefixes

A peculiar case is "deictic", which as far as I can see is used by its advocates
in a sense consonant with its usage elsewhere in linguistics. The problem
with it is that it is arguably descriptively wrong.

"customary aspect" is quite appropriate as it is used for some languages and
is so appropriate descriptively that I would be reluctant to give it up.
The problem is that some authors conflate "customary" and "habitual".
The guilty parties should stop this.

The following seem to me to be specialized but appropriate, or at least not
misleading to non-specialists:

conjunct
D-effect
disjunct
fourth person
peg element
qualifier
verb base
verb theme
y-/b- pronouns

I have no opinion on the following. Indeed, at the risk of displaying my
ignorance, what is the technical Athabascanist usage of "multiple"?

mode
multiple
subject and object (as applied to affixes)
transitional

Bill