Chapter 8. Valency-changing devices in two Southern Zapotec languages

Rosemary G. Beam de Azcona | Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia

This article describes morphological strategies that change the valence of verbs in two Southern Zapotec languages: Coatec Zapotec and Miahuatec Zapotec. These strategies include noun incorporation, causative and anticausative morphemes. Due to historical phonological changes some morphology has become fusional and involves fortition, palatalization, tonal changes, and stem alternations. Southern Zapotec valency-changing morphology is here looked at through a historical lens, with reference to Kaufman’s (1989) Proto-Zapotec verb classification. Data from these and other languages suggest a pattern of non-coronal (R1) replacive morphology associated with intransitivity, the opposite of a pattern previously identified by Kaufman. Proto-Zapotec causative morphology, sometimes now fossilized, has different statuses in Southern Zapotec ranging from derivational to inflectional morphology and to an auxiliary verb.

Published online: 16 December 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.110.08bea

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.

2007 Typological distinctions in word formation. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 2nd edn, Timothy Shopen,(ed.), 1-65. Cambridge: CUP.

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G.

1999 Armonía y elisión de vocales, un caso de ablaut en el zapoteco de Coatlán y Loxicha. In Memorias del V Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en el Noroeste, María del Carmen Morúa Leyva & Gerardo López Cruz (eds), Vol. II, 67-96. Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora.

2004 A Coatlán-Loxicha Zapotec Grammar. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

2008 Un estudio comparativo de los tonos del zapoteco sureño. In Memorias del Coloquio Francisco Belmar: Las lenguas otomangues y oaxaqueñas ante el siglo XXI, Alejandro de Avila, Ausencia López Cruz, Vicente Marcial & Michael Swanton (eds), 161-185. Oaxaca: Fondo. Editorial IEEPO / INALI / Universidad Autónoma ‘Benito Juárez’ de Oaxaca / Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú.

2009 Clasificación de verbos en el zapoteco miahuateco de San Bartolomé Loxicha. Cuadernos del Sur 14: 59-70.

2014 Algunas isoglosas de la Sierra Sur. Paper presented at the Coloquio de Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinas VI in honor of Mario Molina Cruz. Oaxaca: Biblioteca de Investigación“Juan de Córdova”, April 2014.

. In press. Southern Zapotec verb classes. In Inflectional Morphology and Verb Classes in the Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico, Timothy Feist & Enrique Palancar (eds)

. Under review. Spanish infinitives borrowed into Zapotec light verb constructions. In Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond, Karen Dakin, Claudia Parodi & Natalie Operstein (eds)

. In preparation (a). El zapoteco de la Sierra Sur: Estudios diacrónicos y comparativos.

. In preparation (b). Proto-Zapotec *o.

. In preparation (c). A morphological explanation for Zapotec vowel cluster simplification.

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G., Arellanes Arellanes, Francisco, Hernández Luna, Mario Ulises, Manzano Corona, Miriam Itzel, Morales Camacho, Sofía Gabriela & Wagner Oviedo, Carlos de Jesús

. In press. Umlaut (armonía vocálica) en el desarrollo histórico de las lenguas zapotecas. In Debates en torno a la lingüística histórica indomexicana, Lucero Meléndez & Marcela San Giacomo (eds) México: IIA-UNAM

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G., Cruz Cortés, Abdón & Díaz Pacheco, Lázaro

2013 El hombre que conoció a Cocijo. Tlalocan.

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G & Cruz Santiago, Emiliano

. In press. Lexemas verbales multi-morfémicos. In Lenguas zapotecas, Francisco Arellanes, Mario Chávez-Peón & Rosa María Rojas Torres (eds) México: UNAM.

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G. & Cruz Santiago, Emiliano

. In preparation. Una gramática del zapoteco miahuateco de San Bartolomé Loxicha.

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G. & Díaz Pacheco, Lázaro, with Ermelinda Canseco Santos, Pedro Pacheco Pacheco & José Santos Velázquez

. In preparation. Diccionario del zapoteco coateco.

Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G. & Hernández Luna, Mario U.

2014 Dos propuestas para explicar el aumento nasal en el zapoteco de la Sierra Sur. Paper presented at the Coloquio de Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinas VI in honor of Mario Molina Cruz. Oaxaca: Biblioteca de Investigación “Juan de Córdova”, April 2014. https://www.academia.edu/12373733/Dos_propuestas_para_explicar_el_aumento_nasal_en_el_zapoteco_de_la_Sierra_Sur

. In preparation. La vocal /æ/ en el zapoteco de la Sierra Sur.

Black, Cheryl A.

1994 Quiegolani Zapotec Syntax. PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Cruz Santiago, Emiliano & Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G.

. In preparation. Diccionario del zapoteco miahuateco de San Bartolomé Loxicha.

Kaufman, Terrence

1989 The phonology and morphology of Zapotec Verbs. Ms, University of Pittsburgh.

1994-2007 Proto-Zapotec(an) reconstructions. Ms, University of Pittsburgh.

Lillehaugen, Brook Danielle

2012 Causative verbs in Colonial Valley Zapotec. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Portland OR, January 2012.

Mithun, Marianne

1984 The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60: 847-894.

Operstein, Natalie

(with contributions from Aaron Huey Sonnenschein) 2011 A survey of valence-changing operations in Zapotec. Position paper for the Special Session on Valence-Changing Devices in Zapotecan at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Portland, OR, January 2012.

2014 Origin of the Zapotec causative marker *k-: A diachronic-typological perspective. International Journal of American Linguistics 80: 99-114.

Smith-Stark, Thomas C.

2007 Algunas isoglosas zapotecas. In Clasificación de las lenguas indígenas de México. Memorias del III Coloquio Internacional de Lingüística Mauricio Swadesh, Cristina Buenrostro, Samuel Herrera Castro, Yolanda Lastra, Juan José Rendón, Otto Schumann, Leopoldo Valiñas & María Aydeé Vargas Monroy (eds), 69-133. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas.

Swadesh, Morris

1947 The phonemic structure of Proto-Zapotec.International Journal of American Linguistics 13: 220-230.