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

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