word or part of word to form a new word; e.g., + PWr reduplication > 'mini boat'; Stress shift, e.g., 'pay' > 'paid' However, the existence of bare root forms of modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) in Masbatenyo can also provide evidence that root forms also have lexical properties. Examples of this are 'fresh (fish)' versus 'rotten', 'raw' versus 'cooked'. Noun and noun phrases Proper and common nouns are distinguishable from each other because they have their respective determiners; proper nouns are marked by , , and while common nouns are accompanied by , , and . In Masbatenyo, there is a subgroup of common nouns that can be inflected as imitative. The imitative affix can be the reduplicative or the 'imitative/diminutive'. The reduplicative affix – the reduplication of the whole word – is applicable to a stem that is disyllabic and has open penult (CV). Regardless of the original position of the stress, the stress of the reduplicated form is always in the penult, such as in 'man' > 'toy' The is attached to a stem that has more than two syllables. It also attaches to a stem that has a close penult (CVC). The stress does not shift after reduplication. An example of this is 'boat' > 'mini-boat' Temporal nouns can also be reduplicated and affixed with . The meaning, however, is no longer imitative. It means 'every …' as illustrated in 'day' > 'everyday'. Nouns can also be derived from other word classes by adding nominalizing morphemes or voice affixes. Masbatenyo employs three types of possession strategies: (a) possessive clauses ( and and oblique phrases ); (b) lexical noun phrases ( and constructions) and; (c) genitive case pronouns (personal and demonstrative pronouns). Verbs Masbatenyo verbs, like verbs in other Philippine languages, are marked for their voice, aspect and modality. Further, as Nolasco observed in Philippine languages, voice and tense/aspect/mode often interact and it is sometimes difficult to tease them apart. Aspect Masbatenyo is marked for aspect to show the condition of the action; whether it has begun or not, and whether it is viewed as a process or in a static state. What is important to the speakers is not a temporal relation of the activity to the moment of speaking, but the internal stages of the activity. It is not marked for tense since its action is not correlated with time. Masbatenyo has the five aspects: infinitive