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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 40:4 (2023) ► pp.439–491

Realis morphology and Chatino’s role in the diversification of Zapotec languages

ORCID logo | Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia

This paper concerns a semantic change whereby a continuous aspect prefix was reinterpreted as marking realis mood. This change took place in Chatino and then diffused to the Southern Zapotec subgroup, contributing to the genetic diversification of the Zapotec languages. Proto-Zapotecan marked irrealis mood with *k- and did not mark realis. *n- indicated continuous aspect and could concatenate with perfective *ku- to render a resultative reading. A continuous-marked positional verb *n-te later grammaticalized as a progressive prefix in Chatino. As both perfective and progressive refer to (at least partially) realized situations, *n- was reanalyzed as a marker of realis mood that could concatenate with aspectual viewpoint prefixes. The realis prefix is shown to be one of several traits diffused from Chatino which contribute to the creation of the Southern Zapotec clade and its divergence from Monte Albán Zapotec.

Keywords: Zapotec, Chatino, realis, irrealis, nasals, language classification, areal diffusion, Mesoamerica, dialectology, mood, modality, aspect
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Zapotecan subgroups and regions
  • 3.Synchronic description of realis marking
    • 3.1Initial nasals as realis mood
      • 3.1.1Definition and validity of realis mood
      • 3.1.2Realis forms in Chatino and Southern Zapotec
      • 3.1.3Realis and aspect in the joint system of Chatino and Southern Zapotec
      • 3.1.4Realis and negation
    • 3.2Interaction between the realis and aspectual prefixes
      • 3.2.1The variability of the nasal prefix
      • 3.2.2Reduction of NCC clusters
  • 4.The origin of the realis prefix
    • 4.1Verbal inflection in Zapotecan
    • 4.2Realis marking is an innovation, not a retention
      • 4.2.1Preconsonantal nasals in the Western Relic Area
      • 4.2.2Southern Zapotec participles
    • 4.3The placement of continuous *n- preceding other aspect prefixes
      • 4.3.1The continuous prefix applied to perfective forms in Coyachilla
      • 4.3.2The grammaticalization of the progressive construction
      • 4.3.3The reinterpretation of the continuous prefix as realis
    • 4.4Zapotec modal morphology: A test for the realis hypothesis
      • 4.4.1The Zapotec definite future lacks a nasal and is irrealis
      • 4.4.2The Southern Zapotec counterfactual is irrealis but nasal-initial
  • 5.Divergence and convergence of Chatino and Southern Zapotec
    • 5.1Divergence of Zapotec and Chatino through the Core Zapotec period
    • 5.2Southern Zapotec converges with Chatino and diverges from Monte Albán Zapotec
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 26 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.21027.bea
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