body of something or someone else, but is now in his possession)' contrasting with , 'his fat (which is a part of his own body)'. Some of these nouns may change their meaning when preceded by , such as , 'milk' versus , 'her breast'. Lastly, some can only take the indefinite prefix, effectively turning them into regular alienably possessed nouns starting with (e.g. , 'enemy', but , 'his enemy', not *). The second kind of noun bases are compounds, which are formed from two noun stems and sometimes an enclitic of obscure meaning (e.g. , 'his tears', from , combining form of 'eye', and , combining form of 'water'). The third kind of noun bases are nominalized verbs or phrases, which may or may not include some kind of a relative enclitic. Examples include , 'zebra, tiger', from the identical verb meaning 'marks are on it', and , 'badger', from the verb , 'he scratches out' plus the relative enclitic 'he who'. Verbs Like those of most other Athabaskan languages, Plains Apache verbs are highly morphologically complex, exhibiting polypersonal agreement, rich aspect marking, and the characteristic Athabaskan classifier system (a set of four mandatory valence-changing prefixes found throughout the family). Bittle (1963) identifies 14 positions in the verb template, divided into the verbal base (which defines the lexical meaning of the verb) and paradigmatic prefixes (which inflect the verb for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, and voice). The following verb template table is reproduced from Bittle: 3SBJ:3rd person (singular), subject 3OBJ:3rd person (singular), object However, a verb in Plains Apache never has an affix in each position. A typical verb might be inflected as follows: In this case, is the indirect object prefix in slot 1, is the postposition in slot 2, is the direct object prefix in slot 7, is the modal prefix in slot 11, slots 12 and 13 are occupied by zero morphemes, and is the stem in slot 14. All other slots are empty. The above example displays the zero classifier. Following is an example of a fully inflected verb with the classifier prefix: Syntax Like other Southern Athabaskan languages, Plains Apache has strongly head-final tendencies, with a predominant word order of subject-object-verb and postpositions rather than prepositions. This is illustrated in the following example sentences: However, due to the morphological complexity of Plains Apache verb inflection, it is often possible for a sentence to