MATLATZINCA

Sources of the data

Data courtesy of Leonardo Carranza.

Carranza, Leonardo. 2012. Flexión verbal del matlatzinca: Marcación de persona-número y de tiempo-aspecto-modo. Unpublished MA dissertation at the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico.

Carranza, Leonardo. 2014. Flexión y clases verbales en matlatzinca. Coloquio sobre lenguas otomangues y vecinas. Paper read at COLOV VI, Oaxaca, Mexico, 24-27, April.

Verbal inflection

Verbs inflect for at least seven TAM values. The grammatical tenses are called ‘Present’ (in reality an aspectual incompletive), ‘Imperfect’ (a past incompletive), ‘Past’ (a completive), ‘Perfect’, ‘Potential’, ‘Future’ (an irrealis completive), and a ‘Future progressive’ (an irrealis incompletive).

Verbs realize these TAM values by means of a string of prefixes which commonly also index the person of the subject in a cumulative way.

NOTE: A suffix marking number (dual or plural) applies when the prefix does not convey a contrast in number by itself, as for example in the 3rd person of the Perfect or in all persons in the Potential.

Inflectional class interactions

Like in Tlahuica, a verb in Matlatzinca may be inflected as though it belonged to different inflectional classes, resulting in a change in meaning.

For example, the verb –kanchi, inflected as a Class I verb means ‘hit someone’ but as a Class 2 verb it means ‘hit each other’. Similarly, –bati inflected as a Class III verb means ‘lose something’ but as a Class 2 verb it means ‘get lost’. For these two verbs Class 2 serves as a conveyor of middle voice meanings (i.e. reciprocal and reflexive meanings). Similarly, the verb –noni, as a transitive verb of Class III, means 'plough', while as a Class 1 verb it means something like ‘do a ploughing activity’, and as a Class 2 verb it means ‘be ploughed.

When a verb belongs to different inflectional classes, we have indicated this is the following way:

• Verbs have been given a unified lexical gloss: e.g. –kanchi ‘hit’, –bati ‘lose’, –noni ‘tile’, etc.
• The transitive reading of a verb (i.e. referring to an agentive scenario where a subject performs the action on a different participant as object) is given as ‘action’, e.g. as a Class I verb –kanchi means ‘hit’, and as Class III verbs –bati, –noni and –xuk’a mean ‘lose’, ‘plough’ and ‘burn’, respectively.
• When the verb can also be inflected as intransitive, there are different options, besides the obvious ones (motion, state, etc.):
  • ‘autonomously performed’ actions refer to typical reflexive situations involving human beings, where a subject performs the action independently from external causes while holding some control over their actions. This reading is typical of Class 2 verbs: e.g. –bati ‘get lost’.
  • ‘spontaneous’ actions refer to similar situations as ‘autonomously performed’ actions but involving inanimate participants which do not exert control, e.g. as a Class 2 verb –xuk’a ‘burn’ means for food to ‘get burned’.
  • ‘reciprocal’ actions, refer to typical reciprocal actions, e.g. as a Class III verb with a dual or plural subject –kanchi ‘hit’ can also mean ‘hit each other’.
  • ‘passive-impersonal’ actions, refer to the result of the action after a given unspecified agent has acted, e.g. as a Class III verb –noni 'plough a field’ would mean ‘for a field to be ploughed’.

This situation in Matlatzinca and in Tlahuica has come about because inflectional class distinctions in both languages are based on old derivational morphology which was productive in the proto-language but which became unproductive and in most cases phonologically opaque. Classes II and III contain old causative verbs derived by an old morpheme tu-, while Class 2 contains most middle verbs (reflexives, reciprocals, spontaneous, motion, etc.) which were once derived by the old morpheme te-.